The effect of aerobic exercise during pregnancy on vascular BCL-2, BAX and eNOS gene expression in adult male offspring rat

Change in vascular function is considered to be an indicator for vascular disease. Effective factors on vascular function are enzyme eNOS and apoptotic regulator factors including BCL-2 and BAX. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of aerobic exercise during pregnancy on vascular gene expression of BCL-2, BAX, and eNOS in Sprague dawley rats offspring
Ten 8-week-old females Sprague Dawley rats were randomly divided into two groups of exercise during pregnancy (T) (221±9.9) and sedentary (C) (223.8±8). The aerobic exercise training was performed immediately after observation of the vaginal plaque for 21 days and 5 sessions per week with moderate intensity (35-45% vo2 max). About 2 days before delivery, their training program was terminated. Femoral artery samples were collected at 8 weeks of male offspring age. Data was analyzed with independent t-test for between group comparisons. The level of significance was set at p<0.05. Statistical analyses were carried out using the SPSS software (version 16).
The results of the study showed that 21 days of aerobic exercise training with moderate intensity during pregnancy increased significantly mRNA of the BCL-2 gene(P=0.004), decreased significantly mRNA of the BAX gene in male offspring (p=0.000), but there was no significant change in mRNA of the eNOS gene (p=0.494).
It seems that moderate aerobic exercise during pregnancy can reduce apoptosis as a result of vascular dysfunction in adult offspring.