Therapeutic and preventive effects of exercise on cardiometabolic parameters in aging and obese rats

Aging, obesity and sedentarism are among the most important predictors of cardiometabolic diseases. Aiming to reduce the impact of the combination of these three factors, we tested the therapeutic and preventive effects of exercise in aging and obese rats on the following cardiometabolic disease risk parameters: body fat, blood pressure, blood lipids, and glycemic homeostasis.

Eighteen male Wistar rats (initial age = 4 months, and final age = 14 months) were randomly distributed into three aging and obese groups: sedentary, therapeutic exercise and preventive exercise. Food and caloric intake, body adiposity, muscle mass, cardiovascular parameters, biochemical markers, glycemic homeostasis, and gene expression of insulin-dependent, insulin-independent and insulin resistance pathways in skeletal muscle were evaluated.

Therapeutic and preventive exercises were associated with higher food and caloric intake, and expression of TBC1D1 in the soleus muscle, as well as lower total cholesterol/HDL and LDL/HDL ratios, glucose levels at the end (90 min) of the glucose tolerance test and IKBKB expression in the gastrocnemius and soleus muscles. Only the preventive exercise improved the cardiovascular and body composition parameters, glucose tolerance, insulin resistance and insulin sensitivity, besides reducing total cholesterol, triglycerides, triglycerides/HDL ratio, plasmatic insulin and MAPK8 expression in soleus. The preventive exercise group also presented greater expression of INRS, IRS1, IRS2, PIK3CA, AKT1, and SLC2A4 in gastrocnemius and soleus, TBC1D1 in gastrocnemius, and AKT2 and PRKAA1 in soleus.

Therapeutic exercise promoted some improvements on cardiometabolic parameters in aging and obese rats, however, the best benefits were achieved through the preventive exercise.