Background: Patients with chronic schizophrenia present cognitive impairment, which affects their social function and prevents them from reintegrating into society. Yijinjing is a traditional Chinese aerobic exercise that has a putative psychosomatic effect on improving cognitive function.Methods: From January to May 2021, 40 patients with chronic schizophrenia were recruited and randomly divided into a control group and a Yijinjing group. In the 12-week intervention, the patients in the control group received conventional treatment, whereas patients in the Yijinjing group performed Yijinjing exercise (40 min/session, twice a week) in addition to receiving conventional treatment. The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), the Insight and Treatment Attitude Questionnaire (ITAQ), the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale (SES), and the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) were used to measure clinical symptoms and cognitive function at 0, 6, and 12 weeks.Results: The demographic information was not significantly different between groups. At baseline, the scores of all the scales were not statistically different between groups. After 12 weeks of intervention, compared to those at baseline, the scores of the negative scale (t = 19.00, p < 0.0001), general psychopathology scale (t = 15.98, p < 0.0001), and total score (t = 15.47, p < 0.0001) of the PANSS and SES (t = 5.378, p < 0.0001) had significantly decreased, and the scores of the ITAQ (t = 7.984, p < 0.0001) and MMSE (t = 6.750, p < 0.0001) had significantly increased in Yijinjing group; the score of the MMSE increased in the control group as well (t = 2.491, p = 0.0222). Compared to the respective scores in the control group, the negative scale score (t = 2.953, p = 0.0054) significantly decreased, and the ITAQ (t = 3.043, p = 0.0042) and MMSE (t = 2.2.68, p = 0.0291) scores significantly increased in the Yijinjing group after 12 weeks of intervention.Conclusion: These results provide a preliminary indication that Yijinjing exercise had the potential to improve cognitive function and negative symptoms in patients with chronic schizophrenia. A larger-scale study to determine the trajectory of change in the longer term should be undertaken.

ObjectiveTo analyze the research hot spots and frontiers of studies on of the fusion of sports and medicine (FSM) in China in recent decade via CiteSpace.MethodsRelevant publications related FSM published from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2021 were obtained from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database. CiteSpace software was used to analyze the amount of publications, institutions and keywords using standard bibliometric indicators.ResultsA total of 729 publications on FSM were identified, and 688 qualified records were included in the final analysis. Between 2012 to 2021, the number of publications showed a trend of growth, albeit with certain fluctuations. The authors of these publications were mainly from universities or colleges with sports background. The institution leading the study was the Beijing Sport University (n = 20), the most prolific (n =12) and most-cited (224 times) author was Guo JJ from Capital University of Physical Education Sports. The journal with most publications on FSM was Contemporary Sports Technology (n =74). The analysis of keywords showed that the “FSM” had the highest frequency (n = 269), “integration of sports and medicine” had the strongest citation bursts (4.82), “national fitness” had the highest centrality (0.97) in recent decade, and 15 clusters of keywords were produced by log-likelihood ratio (all silhouette value >0.9).ConclusionThe findings of this bibliometric study analyse the current status and trends in the FSM in China, which may help to identify hot topics, explore new study directions for scholars and policymakers in the future.