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Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 16|pp 20495—20510

Anti-apoptotic and pro-survival effect of exercise training on early aged hypertensive rat cerebral cortex

Yi-Jie Liu1,2, Zhen-Yang Cui3, Ai-Lun Yang4, Amadou W. Jallow5, Hai-Liang Huang6, Chun-Lei Shan1,2, Shin-Da Lee1,3,5,7,8
  • 1School of Rehabilitation Medicine, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, China
  • 2Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, China
  • 3School of Rehabilitation Medicine, Weifang Medical University, Shandong, China
  • 4Institute of Sports Sciences, University of Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan
  • 5Department of Medical Laboratory and Biotechnology, Asia University, Taichung, Taiwan
  • 6College of Rehabilitation, Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shandong, China
  • 7Department of Physical Therapy, Graduate Institute of Rehabilitation Science, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan
  • 8Department of Physical Therapy, Asia University, Taichung, Taiwan
* Equal contribution
Received: October 29, 2020Accepted: July 23, 2021Published: August 25, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203431

Copyright: © 2021 Liu 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

The anti-apoptotic and pro-survival effects of exercise training were evaluated on the early aged hypertensive rat cerebral cortex. The brain tissues were analysed from ten sedentary male Wistar Kyoto normotensive rats (WKY), ten sedentary spontaneously 12 month early aged hypertensive rats (SHR), and ten hypertensive rats undergoing treadmill exercise training (60 min/day, 5 days/week) for 12 weeks (SHR-EX). TUNEL-positive apoptotic cells, the expression levels of endonuclease G (EndoG) and apoptosis-inducing factor (AIF) (caspase-independent apoptotic pathway), Fas ligand, Fas death receptor, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α, TNF receptor 1, Fas-associated death domain, active caspase-8 and active caspase-3 (Fas-mediated apoptotic pathways) as well as t-Bid, Bax, Bak, Bad, cytochrome c, active caspase 9 and active caspase-3 (mitochondria-mediated apoptotic pathways) were reduced in SHR-EX compared with SHR. Pro-survival Bcl2, Bcl-xL, p-Bad, 14-3-3, insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-1, pPI3K/PI3K, and pAKT/AKT were significantly increased in SHR-EX compared to those in SHR. Exercise training suppressed neural EndoG/AIF-related caspase-independent, Fas/FasL-mediated caspase-dependent, mitochondria-mediated caspase-dependent apoptotic pathways as well as enhanced Bcl-2 family-related and IGF-1-related pro-survival pathways in the early aged hypertensive cerebral cortex. These findings indicated new therapeutic effects of exercise training on preventing early aged hypertension-induced neural apoptosis in cerebral cortex.