Exercise and brain health in long COVID: mechanisms and therapeutic implications for neuropsychiatric disorders

Abstract

Psychiatric and neurological disorders represent a major global health burden, often characterized by chronic disability and incomplete response to pharmacological treatments. The emergence of long COVID has further contributed to this challenge, introducing persistent neuropsychiatric and neurological sequelae, including cognitive impairment, fatigue, mood disturbances, and autonomic dysfunction, that overlap with mechanisms observed in established brain disorders. This narrative review synthesizes current evidence on exercise as a multimodal therapeutic strategy for individuals with long COVID and pre-existing or COVID-related psychiatric and neurological conditions. Exercise may exert broad effects across interconnected biological systems, potentially enhancing neuroplasticity and neurotrophic signaling, modulating neuroinflammation and immune responses, improving mitochondrial function and energy metabolism, supporting cerebrovascular health, regulating stress physiology and autonomic balance, and influencing the gut–brain axis. These mechanisms are thought to converge on shared pathophysiological pathways implicated in depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, neurodegenerative diseases, stroke, epilepsy, and post-viral syndromes. Clinical evidence suggests that structured, individualized, and supervised exercise programs may improve mood, cognition, mobility, fatigue, and quality of life. However, careful pacing and symptom-contingent adaptation are essential in long COVID to avoid post-exertional symptom exacerbation. Although high-quality randomized trials remain limited, exercise appears to be a promising, low-risk, and potentially scalable component of multidisciplinary rehabilitation in long COVID-related brain disorders.