Effect of Endurance Exercise on Antioxidant Enzyme Activities and Lipid Peroxidation in the Heart of the Streptozotocin-Induced Diabetic Rats

Oxidative stress can promote the development of complications of diabetes. Moderate exercise improves cardiac antioxidant status in diabetic animals. The current study aimed to investigate the effect of 8 week endurance exercise training on some heart antioxidant enzyme activities and lipid peroxidation of heart tissue in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats.
To this end, 30 male Wistar rats were randomly divided into 3 groups: the healthy control group (C), diabetic control group (DC) and trained diabetic group (TD). Animals in TD group were exercised on a treadmill 4 days a week for 8 weeks. After 8 weeks, superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and catalase (CAT) activities and malondialdehyde (MDA) levels were measured in heart tissues. The data were analyzed using one-way ANOVA (p The CAT and GPx activities of the heart tissue in DC group were found to be significantly higher (p=0.000) in compared with C group, whereas SOD activity was not found significantly different among the experimental groups. Also, heart GPx activity in TD group was significantly lower (p=0.000) than that of DC group, while CAT activity was not affected by endurance training. After 8-week endurance exercise (TD group), the MDA levels of heart tissue were significantly higher (respectively p The results of the present study have demonstrated that due to decreased GPx activities and MDA levels, endurance exercise may make the heart tissue more susceptible to oxidative stress.