THE EFFECT OF HIGH-INTENSITY INTERVAL TRAINING (HIIT) WITH AND WITHOUT CAFFEINE INJECTION ON EXPRESSION OF MYOCARDIAL AUTOPHAGY-RELATED PROTEINS IN DIABETIC RATS

Autophagy is a new therapeutic strategy aimed at reducing the diabetic abnormalities. While excessive or insufficient autophagic activity during diabetes leads to altered cellular homeostasis. So, aim of the present study was conducted to determine the effect of eight-week high-intensity interval training (HIIT) along with caffeine injection on the levels of some myocardial autophagy-related proteins in diabetic rats.

In experimental design, fifty male white wistar rats with an age range of 3-2 months  (average weight 250±25 g) were randomly divided into 5 groups of homogeneous 10 rats in each group: Healthy control (C: intraperitoneal injection of saline), Diabetic control (D: high-fat diet combined with a single intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin, Diabetic with training (D+T: running with intensity at the 85-90% of maximum speed in 5 to 12 bout of 2 min-1; 5 days/week for 8 weeks), Diabetic with caffeine supplementation(D+CA: intraperitoneal injection of pure caffeine at 70 mg.kg-1 5 days/week for 8 weeks), Diabetic with training and with caffeine supplementation (D+T+CA). For evaluate changes in the expression profile of some of the genes associated with autophagy signaling pathway (LC3-II, ULK-1, Beclin1) in the myocardium (left ventricular), based on Western blot analysis will be used. Also, the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey post hoc test were be used to analyze the data.

The expression of all autophagic proteins in diabetic with trained and non-trained groups was higher than in healthy
group (P≤0.05). On the one hand, the expression of autophagy-related proteins in the trained group with caffeine supplementation was significantly higher than that of the training group without caffeine intake (P=0.001).

The findings of this study suggest that caffeine injection exacerbated the expression of autophagic proteins induced by diabetes; On the other hand, high-intensity interval training can as a preventive strategy, modulate diabetes-induced myocardial autophagy.