Physical activity and apoptosis, a brief review of previous findings

Physical activity affects the health of the body's organs through several processes. Apoptosis is one of the important cellular processes that play a role in maintaining the balance between cell death and tissue growth. The aim of the present study was to examine the previous findings regarding the effect of physical activity and exercise on apoptosis in order to obtain a relatively comprehensive knowledge of this effect by summarizing and analyzing the data. To collect the information of the articles, a search was made from PubMed, MEDLINE, SID, IranMedex, IranDoc, Magiran and Medlib databases. More than 80 scientific articles from 2000 to 2023 were reviewed. The keywords used were: physical activity, aerobic exercise, endurance exercise, apoptosis and cell suicide. After the review, finally 26 articles were selected. Then, the selected items were fully studied and finalized, and the items that were more complete than the others were selected as references. Physical activity and exercise, especially aerobic exercise, as a safe, cheap and accessible method, can reduce apoptosis through several mechanisms. The breadth of studies in this field, and the overlapping of many data, allows us to confidently introduce exercise and aerobic activity as one of the best methods of regulating body homeostasis and reducing apoptosis.