Voluntary exercise and its effects on young SHR and stroke-prone hypertensive rats

To determine whether voluntary exercise would lower resting blood pressure in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats (SP-SHR), two separate but interrelated investigations were undertaken. The studies were initiated when the animals were 28-35 days of age and after they were assigned to either activity or sedentary cages. The activity cages were connected to transducers and recorders that allowed the monitoring and calculation of frequency, duration, and running speed. The SHR group ran 3-7 km/day intermittently for 12 wk at high speeds (48-68 m/min), which resulted in heart rates in excess of 500 beats/min. When the SHR exercised, they seldom exceeded 33 revolutions/bout (37 m) with the majority being less than 22 revolutions/bout. This type of exercise training significantly lowered, but did not normalize, resting blood pressure by approximately 20 mmHg [nontrained (NT) = 185 +/- 5; trained (T) = 163 +/- 5 mmHg] while increasing maximum O2 consumption (VO2max) (NT = 78 +/- 2.6; T = 95 +/- 2.2 ml X min-1 X kg-1) and endurance run time (NT = 62 +/- 9.0; T = 286 +/- 15.0 min), respectively. Although SP-SHR exhibited comparable patterns of voluntary activity, the effects were not similar. First, after approximately 5 wk of consuming a special Japanese rat chow and a 1% NaCl drinking solution, cerebrovascular lesions occurred and deaths ultimately resulted in both exercising and sedentary groups. Second, although there was statistical evidence for a training effect (higher VO2max, longer VO2 test run times), voluntary exercise had no advantage in either male or female runners in lowering resting blood pressures or in improving their life-spans. Whereas voluntary activity wheel exercise or moderate forced treadmill exercise will lower resting blood pressures in young SHR populations, similar generalizations cannot be made with young SP-SHR rats.