The rehabilitation training and antioxidant status in patients with myocardial infarction

Myocardial infarction (MI) is associated with increased oxidative stress and reduced antioxidants. Some studies have shown that exercise training increases the serum level antioxidants. Therefore, this study investigated the effect of rehabilitation training on antioxidant status in patients with myocardial infarction.

In this study, 20 patients with myocardial infarction were selected and randomly assigned to training group (n=10) or control group (n=10). Training program included 3 sessions of concurrent training per week for eight consecutive weeks. To measure the values of malondialdehyde (MDA), protein carbonylation (PC) and total antioxidant capacity (TAC), 10 ml of blood were taken pre- and post-training in each patient. The t-test was used to analyze the data. P<0.05 was considered significant in all tests.

The data showed that 8 weeks of rehabilitation training significantly reduces MDA (2.37±0.59 µM and 3.74±1.34 µM in training and control groups, respectively; P=0.000) and PC (9.15±1.77 nmol/mg protein and 11.48±1.60 nmol/mg protein in training and control groups, respectively; P=0.006) levels and significantly increases TAC (10.09±1.70 U/ml and 8.34±1.56 U/ml in training and control groups, respectively; P=0.031).

Since the findings of the present study show a reduction in oxidative stress markers (MDA, PC) and an increase in total antioxidants capacity, it seems that eight weeks of concurrent training may improve the antioxidant capacity in patients after myocardial infarction.