Open Access

Ana Izabela Oliveira-Souza, Lisa Gülkner, Liz Dennett, Jorge F. Contreras, Marie Kempe, Sofia Grimmelsmann, Ester Castro-Carletti, Harry von Piekartz, Susan Armijo-Olivo

• Methods: The searches were conducted on five electronic databases. RCTs or CTs with patients over 18 years old of both sexes with OFP diagnoses were targeted. The intervention of interest was AE (i.e., walking, cycling, and running), compared to any other conservative and non-conservative therapy. The primary outcome was pain intensity. Risk of bias (RoB) was done with the Cochrane RoB tool (RoB 2). The overall certainty of the evidence was evaluated with GRADE. Results: Out of 21,585 initial records found in the initial database search, only one study (reported on three manuscripts) was included. The diagnosis of interest was headache plus temporomandibular disorders (TMD). Three treatment groups (strengthening (Str) exercise + manual therapy (MT) (G1); AE + MT + Str exercises (G2); AE (G3)) were compared. The main outcome was pain; the secondary outcomes included disability, strength, anxiety, and quality of life. The combined treatment (AE+MT+Str exercises) had the strongest effect to decrease pain and headache intensity in patients with OFP (SMD: 9.99 [95%CI: 7.19, 12.80]. Conclusions: a multimodal treatment strategy achieved the greatest positive effects on pain and other outcomes in the short/medium term. AE seems to be an important component of this strategy. However, the scientific evidence supporting AE’s isolated effect is limited, indicating a research gap in this scientific field.