JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The worldwide increasing of prevalence of non-communicable diseases has grown the recognition of necessity for identifying the modifiable risk in preventing and managing these diseases. While, the office worker, as a representative group of physical inactivity, is exposed to risk factor of metabolic syndrome which is considered as the pathway of non-communicable diseases.

Objective:

This study mainly focuses on the purpose of examining the interventional efficacy of at-home immersive virtual reality exergame on several metabolic syndrome biomarkers among office workers. In addition, it purposes to determine the impacts of at-home immersive virtual reality exergame on lifestyle pattern of office workers.

Methods:

A 2-armed, single blinded randomized controlled trial (RCT) will be applied to examine the therapeutic effects of at-home immersive virtual reality exergame in this exploratory study. 120 Japanese office workers with less than 150 minutes per week of moderate to vigorous sports activities will be recruited by a convenience sample method. They are randomly allocated to two parallel groups, which including an intervention group: 12-week training of at least 150 minutes per week at-home immersive virtual reality exergame playing with a set device of Meta Quest 2, a control group: 12-week of maintaining regular exercise, eating, and working habits without making significant changes. During this 12-week trial, 3 main follow up steps are included at the timelines of 0 week, 6 weeks, 12 weeks. For each follow up, we will collect three types of variables, including major clinical risk factors of metabolic syndrome, lifestyle pattern factors of metabolic syndrome, and demographics (0 week only). To analysis the variance between intervention group and control group, mixed linear model will be applied to understand the efficacy result of this intervention. The variances of metabolic syndrome clinical risk factors between groups would be used to express the therapeutic effects of at-home immersive virtual reality exergame. The changes of lifestyle pattern factors would be applied to show the impacts of at-home immersive virtual reality exergame on lifestyle pattern. The ethics approval application, including informed consent and assent contents of this protocol, will be submitted to the ethics committee in 2025.

Results:

Participant recruitment will be started once ethical approval is ready and its timeline of process may continue 1 month. After a 12-week intervention and data analysis, the completed trial is expected to accomplish submission at the early of 2026.

Conclusions:

This study is an emerging topic that applies the attractive intervention of at-home immersive virtual reality exergame to determine the efficacy for metabolic syndrome among office workers. The examined effect results may contribute to promoting office workers health condition and help to release the health burden of metabolic syndrome risk.