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Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 1|pp 1294—1313

Exercise reduces metabolic burden while altering the immune system in aged mice

Kyeong Jin Yoon1,2, Aram Ahn3, Soo Hong Park1,2, Seung Hee Kwak1,2, Seong Eun Kwak1,4, Wonsang Lee1,2, Yong Ryoul Yang5, Minji Kim6,9, Hyun Mu Shin6,9, Hang-Rae Kim6,7,8,9, Hyo Youl Moon1,2,10
  • 1Department of Physical Education, Seoul National University, Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  • 2Institute of Sport Science, Seoul National University, Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  • 3Department of Kinesiology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269,USA
  • 4School of Kinesiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
  • 5Aging Research Center, Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Daejeon, Republic of Korea
  • 6Department of Biomedical Sciences, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  • 7BK21Plus Biomedical Science Project, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  • 8Medical Research Institute, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea
  • 9Wide River Institute of Immunology, Seoul National University, Hongcheon, Republic of Korea
  • 10Institute on Aging, Seoul National University, Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Received: August 31, 2020Accepted: November 13, 2020Published: January 6, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202312

Copyright: © 2020 Yoon et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Although several evidence has suggested the impact of exercise on the prevention of aging phenotypes, few studies have been conducted on the mechanism by which exercise alters the immune-cell profile, thereby improving metabolism in senile obesity. In this study, we confirmed that 4-week treadmill exercise sufficiently improved metabolic function, including increased lean mass and decreased fat mass, in 88-week-old mice. The expression level of the senescence marker p16 in the white adipose tissue (WAT) was decreased after 4-weeks of exercise. Exercise induced changes in the profiles of immune-cell subsets, including natural killer (NK) cells, central memory CD8+ T cells, eosinophils, and neutrophils, in the stromal vascular fraction of WAT. In addition, it has been shown through transcriptome analysis of WAT that exercise can activate pathways involved in the interaction between WAT and immune cells, in particular NK cells, in aged mice. These results suggest that exercise has a profound effect on changes in immune-cell distribution and senescent-cell scavenging in WAT of aged mice, eventually affecting overall energy metabolism toward a more youthful state.