Effect of 12 weeks aerobic training and oral green tea extract on cardiac caspase-3 expression in aged male rats

The incidence of heart failure increases with age. Cardiomyocyte apoptosis contributes to the pathogenesis of heart failure. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of 12 weeks aerobic training and oral green tea extract on cardiac caspase-3 expression in aged male rats. In this study, 32 aged male rats were randomly divided into 4 groups: control, exercise, supplement and exercise + supplement. Exercise groups performed at intensity of 60-75% of vo2peak aerobic exercise for 12 weeks and 5 days per week; meantime, the supplementary groups consumed green tea extract. Immunohistochemistry method was used to measure the expression of caspase-3. Data was analyzed by ANOVA and Tukey's post hoc test. The results show that caspase-3 expression was significantly lower in exercise group (18%), supplement group (13%) and exercise + supplement group (43%), than the control group (p≤0.05). Also, caspase-3 expression was significantly lower in exercise + supplement group than exercise group (30%) and supplement group (34%) (p≤0.05). According to the results of this of this study, combination of 12 weeks of moderate-intensity aerobic training with supplementation of green tea extract can decreased the expression of cardiac caspase-3 than aerobic training and supplementation of green tea alone