The Effect of 8 Weeks of Combined Training on Serum Adropin and Nitric Oxide in Hypertensive Postmenopausal Women

Even though endothelial dysfunction and reduction of nitric oxide are considered to be responsible for postmenopausal hypertension, the underlying mechanisms are not yet to be fully recognized. Adropin has been shown to play a key role in this regard. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of 8 weeks of combined training on adropin, serum nitric oxide as well as blood pressure in hypertensive postmenopausal women. For this purpose, 20 postmenopausal women with satge-1 hypertension were randomly divided into two groups: training and control. The training group participated in combined exercise (walking with a moderate intensity of 60-70% of maximum heart rate (HRmax)) and resistance training with an intensity of 10 repetitions maximum (equivalent to 70% of 1RM) 3 sessions per week for 8 weeks. Blood samples were collected before and after training intervention. Adropin concentration was measured by sandwich ELISA method and serum nitric oxide was measured by calorimetric method. Dependent and independent t tests were used to analyze and compare the differences within groups and between groups respectively.The significance level was set as α<0.05. The results indicated thatadropin and serum NO levels significantly increased in the training group compared with the control group (P=0.000). Furthermore, systolic and diastolic blood pressures were significantly lower in the training group compared with the control group (P=0.000).In conclusion,it seems that combined training contributes to the reduction of blood pressure in postmenopausal women through an increase in serum adropin and nitric oxide.