The Effect of Endurance Training and Nettle Consumption on Protein and Gene Expression of AKT and GLUT4 in Soleus Muscle of Diabetic Male Rats

Diabetes is one of the most common chronic diseases in today's society. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of endurance training and nettle consumption on the protein and gene expression of AKT, GLUT4 and insulin in male of muscle soleus of diabetic rats.

After adaptation to the environment, 40 male Wistar rats were divided into 5 groups: control (C), diabetes (D), nettle+diabetes (UD), exercise+diabetes (ED) and exercise+nettle+diabetes (EUD). After developing and confirming the diabetes model by injection of STZ, rats in the exercise groups performed an endurance training protocol for eight weeks and rats in the nettle groups consumed nettle extract 5 days a week. After completion of the protocol and extraction of soleus muscle, RT-PCR method was used to measure gene expression, Western blot and immunohistochemically method was used to measure protein expression of glut-4 and AKT respectively and ELIZA method was used to measure glucose and insulin.

The results showed that the protein and genes expression of GLUT4 and AKT in the diabetic group compared to the control group was significantly reduced (P<0.001) while the expression of these two variables was significantly increased in the ED and EUD groups (P<0.001) that this increase was greater in the EUD group. The effect of nettle alone on the expression of these two variables was not significant. Glucose, insulin and insulin resistance increased significantly in the diabetes group, while these decreased significantly in the ED and EUD groups (P<0.001).

The synergist of the combination of nettle and exercise significantly improves the improve of diabetes, while each alone has little effect on diabetes-related variables.