Feasibility and Effects of a Blended Baduanjin Exercise and Green Tea Consumption Program on Depressive Symptoms, Gut Microbiota and Quality of Life in Older Adults

June 30, 2026 updated by: Hong Kong Baptist University

Feasibility and Effects of a Blended Baduanjin Exercise and Green Tea Consumption Program on Depressive Symptoms, Gut Microbiota and Quality of Life in Older Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Depression is a common mental health issue in older adults, often manifesting as insomnia, low mood, vague somatic complaints, cognitive decline, and recurrent thoughts of death or suicide. Even subthreshold depressive symptoms in late life significantly impair quality of life. In Hong Kong, recent data show high prevalence of depressive symptoms among community-dwelling older adults (43.7% in men, 54.8% in women), underscoring the urgent public health and economic need for effective interventions.

Although the previous evidence has shown that BDJ and GT consumption can improve depressive symptoms, gut microbiota, and QoL respectively, the feasibility and effect of the combination of two intervention approaches in older adults remain unclear. Therefore, the proposed study aims to (1) determine the feasibility of a 12-week blended BDJ and GT consumption program among Hong Kong community-dwelling older adults with depressive symptoms in a small-scale sample, and (2) examine the effects of the blended BDJ and GT consumption program on their depressive symptoms, gut-microbiota and QoL compared with that in the active control group.

Study Overview

Status

Recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

This study will be a single-blind 2-group RCT to examine the feasibility and the effects (immediate effects and 3-month residual effects) of the 12-week blended BDJ and GT consumption program on depressive symptoms, gut-microbiota and QoL among older adults with depressive symptoms. The target population will be Hong Kong community-dwelling older adults with depressive symptoms. Participants will be randomly assigned into one of two groups: a blended BDJ and GT consumption group and a control group. Evaluation will be conducted at pre-intervention (T1), post-intervention (T2), and 3-month after intervention completion (T3). Outcome assessors will be blinded from the assignment results to the intervention.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

48

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Study Contact Backup

  • Name: Yanping Duan

Study Locations

  • Hong Kong
      • Kwun Tong, Hong Kong
        • Recruiting
        • Bliss District Elderly Community Centre
        • Contact:

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  1. community-dwelling older adults aged 65 to 84 years, who are youngest-old and middle-old with relatively stable health status compared with oldest-old aged 85 years and above
  2. Scoring 5-15 using the Chinese version of Geriatric Depression Scale.
  3. Access the smartphone and internet through which the Hospital Authority (HA) HA Go mobile app.
  4. Pass the PAR-Q screening and no contraindications for physical exercise.
  5. No history of smoking.

Exclusion Criteria:

  1. suffer from cognitive impairment identified by the Chinese version of the Mini-Mental Status Examination (i.e., score < 24).
  2. regularly consume tea or coffee (≥3 times/day, last for ≥6 months) as these habitual behaviors can contaminate the effects of tea consumption intervention per se.
  3. Individuals with contraindications for tea consumption, such as insomnia, anemia, neurasthenia, hyperthyroidism, digestive ulcers, etc.
  4. The concurrent use of sedative and tranquilizer medications, such as benzodiazepines and barbiturates.
  5. take warfarin;
  6. Participants are attending other health projects related to physical exercise and diet.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Treatment
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: Single

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: blended Baduanjin and Green Tea consumption program
Participants, will receive the 12-week blended Baduanjin (60 mins/session) and Green Tea consumption (2 cups per day for 5 weeks) program
Behavioral: blended Baduanjin and Green Tea consumption program
The participants will be invited to attend both BDJ exercise and GT consumption interventions for 12 weeks. The exercise instructor will provide group teaching with individual instructions on specific movements. Participants will also adopt a dose of 3g tea with 200ml water, 2 cups daily. The tea consumption will last 12 weeks in this project to keep the same intervention duration as BDJ group.
Placebo Comparator: Non-treatment control
Participants will receive biweekly telephone calls within 12 weeks.Each call will last about 5 minutes.
Behavioral: Non-treatment control
Participants will receive biweekly telephone calls within 12 weeks.Each call will last about 5 minutes.The participants will be asked several questions about their physical exercise and tea consumption behaviors.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Self-reported depressive symptoms
Time Frame: Outcome evaluations will be performed three times at pre-intervention (T1 baseline), after 12-weeks intervention (T2 post-intervention), and 3 months after intervention completion (T3 follow-up test).
The Chinese version of the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-C) will be used to measure the subjective depression level. The GDS are the most widely used scales for the detection of depression symptoms in older adults (Cronbach's α = .81 -.83).
Outcome evaluations will be performed three times at pre-intervention (T1 baseline), after 12-weeks intervention (T2 post-intervention), and 3 months after intervention completion (T3 follow-up test).

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Gut-microbiota
Time Frame: Evaluations of stool test will be performed three times at pre-intervention (T1), the 12-week (3-month) post-intervention (T2), and the 3-month follow-up (T3) occasions.
Total genomic DNA will be extracted from stool samples using NEBnext microbiome DNA enrichment kit (New England Biolabs, Ipswich, MA, US) following the manufacturer's instructions. Gut microbiome will be an be analysed by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing for the V3-V4 region (OmicLab Limited, Hong Kong). The amplified products will be sequenced on the Illumina NovaSeq platform and analysed using QIIME1 software. Several microbiome compositional and functional indicators will be measured, e.g., total gene counts, relative abundance of predominant bacterial groups, alpha and beta diversity, and functional annotations of the gut microbiota (Hu et al., 2023; Wang et al., 2023). DNA extraction, 16S rRNA sequencing and analyses will be performed by OmicLab Limited, Hong Kong.
Evaluations of stool test will be performed three times at pre-intervention (T1), the 12-week (3-month) post-intervention (T2), and the 3-month follow-up (T3) occasions.
Perceived quality of life
Time Frame: Outcome evaluations will be performed three times at pre-intervention (T1 baseline), after 12-week intervention (T2 post-test), and 3 months after intervention completion (T3 follow-up test)
The quality of life will be assessed using the brief version of the Hong Kong Chinese WHO Quality of Life Scale (WHOQOL-BREF) (Cronbach's α = .73 - .84). The scale includes 28 items, covering four dimensions of how older adults perceive their quality of life. The total score of the questionnaire ranges from 28 to 140, and a higher score indicates that the individual feels they have a high quality of life.
Outcome evaluations will be performed three times at pre-intervention (T1 baseline), after 12-week intervention (T2 post-test), and 3 months after intervention completion (T3 follow-up test)

Other Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Retention rate
Time Frame: Data collection will be performed three times at pre-intervention (T1 baseline), after 12-week intervention (T2 post-test), and 3 months after intervention completion (T3 follow-up test).
Percentage of participants completing assessments at the pre-intervention test, post-intervention test, and follow-up test. Criterion: at least 75% of participants completed data collection.
Data collection will be performed three times at pre-intervention (T1 baseline), after 12-week intervention (T2 post-test), and 3 months after intervention completion (T3 follow-up test).
Session attendance rate
Time Frame: Session attendance will be recorded during the 12-week intervention
Participants completed at least 83% of intervention sessions for BDJ (20 out of 24 sessions) and GT consumption (140 out of 168 cups)
Session attendance will be recorded during the 12-week intervention

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Hong Kong Baptist University

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Yanping Duan, Hong Kong Baptist University

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

November 1, 2025

Primary Completion (Estimated)

November 28, 2026

Study Completion (Estimated)

April 30, 2027

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

June 30, 2026

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

June 30, 2026

First Posted (Actual)

July 7, 2026

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

July 7, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

June 30, 2026

Last Verified

June 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • RC- FNRA-IG /24-25/RC- FNRA-IG

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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