The effect of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise and orange peel extract on the expression of HGF in hepatocytes of obese female Wistar rats

This study aims to investigate the simultaneous effect of aerobic exercise and orange peel extract on the expression of HGF gene in hepatocytes of obese rats.

Rats were randomly divided into five groups of 6: an obese group, aerobic training obese group, an obese group that ate extract, an obese group that exercised and ate extract, and a control health group that did not have any intervention. The rats were fattened based on a research protocol, and training and extraction protocols were started. The exercise protocol was performed five days a week, with an intensity of 50 to 75% VO2max for six weeks. Extraction was done five times a week. The expression of HGF gene in liver tissue was done by the Real-Time PCR method. Independent t-test and two-way analysis of variance ANOVA between groups were used to test the data. GraphPad Prism version 10 software was used to analyze it with a significance level of p=0.05.

The expression of hepatocyte HGF showed a significant increase in the groups of aerobic exercise (p=0.009), extract (p=0.035), and extract + aerobic exercise (p=0.0001) compared to the obese group. There was no difference between the obese and control groups in the expression of HGF in the liver tissue (p=0.99).

The findings of this research show that aerobic exercise and extract alone can increase the expression of HGF, and on the other hand, the synergistic effect of aerobic exercise and orange peel extract also increases the expression of this factor; HGF is a protector of hepatocyte tissue.