Single Dose Administration of Taheebo Polyphenol Enhances Endurance Capacity in Mice

Endurance capacity is important for maintenance of quality of life as well as performance of endurance athletes. In order to improve endurance, intake of nutritional supplements as well as exercise training is also important. Indeed, polyphenolic extracts from plants are known to improve endurance capacity via increase of fatty acid utilization, mitochondrial biogenesis or inhibition of oxidative stress. Taheebo, the extract obtained from inner bark of Tabebuia avellanedae has been reported to have beneficial effects for treatment of inflammation, oxidative stress and obesity. Here, we investigated the effects and mechanisms of polyphenol fraction of taheebo (taheebo polyphenol; TP) on endurance capacity of mice. Single dose administration of TP significantly increased running time until exhaustion. Acute TP administration increased blood glucose and muscle glycogen levels (p < 0.05) through alteration on expression level of genes involved with glycogen metabolism and gluconeogenesis. Furthermore, TP administration decreased exercise-induced increase of protein carbonyls in skeletal muscle. These results suggest that TP administration improve endurance capacity via up-regulation of skeletal muscle glycogen levels and maintenance of blood glucose by acceleration of gluconeogenesis as well as inhibition of exercise-induced oxidative stress. Single administration of TP also increased phosphorylation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and gene expression level of sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) but did not change the marker of mitochondrial biogenesis.