The Effect of Aerobic Training on Tumor Necrosis Factor alpha, Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-1 alpha & Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Gene Expression in Cardiac Tissue of Diabetic Rats

The goal of this research was to determine the influence of 4 weeks aerobic training on gene expression of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), hypoxia-inducible factor-1 alpha (HIF-1α) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in the cardiac tissue of diabetic rats.

In an experimental study, 30 male wistar rats were partitioned into three groups (n=10), diabetic aerobic training, diabetic control and healthy control (n=10). Induction of type 2diabetes (T2DM) was done by intraperitoneal infusion of streptozotocin. The progressive aerobic training protocol entailed 4 weeks, 5 sessions per week running on treadmill at velocity of 20 m/min for 60 min. The gene expression of TNF-α, VEGF and HIF-1α were measured by real time & PCR. One way analysis of variance and bonferroni test were applied to analysis the data. The significant level was set at P-value< 0.05.

The results indicated that the aerobic training induced significant decrease in TNF-α mRNA (P-value< 0.001) and significant increase in HIF-1α mRNA (P-value< 0.001) and VEGF mRNA (P-value< 0.001) compared to diabetic control group.

It appears that aerobic training with reduction of TNF-α issues an affirmative effect on angiogenesis, as a result, it improves diabetic cardiac.