The effect of aerobic training on hepatic glycogen stores in prediabetes mice

Since many cellular and molecular pathways involve in diabetes are unknown, the aim of the present study was to study the effects of aerobic exercise on glycogen stores in pre-diabetic rats.

Twenty-one homogenous male C57BL/6 mice were randomly divided into two groups including Mice fed standard diet (n=7) and Mice fed high fat diet (n=14). The mice were fed for 12 weeks and then the pre-diabetic conditions of the mice were assessed by fasting glucose and glucose tolerance tests. After confirmation of pre-diabetic conditions, mice fed a high-fat diet were divided into two groups as high-fat-sedentary diet, and high-fat diet-aerobic exercise. Mice in the training group were trained on a treadmill for 10 weeks, five days a week for 45 minutes in every session. Twenty-four hours after the last training session, the rats were killed and blood was drawn from the rats’ hearts. Liver tissue was isolated and frozen to measure glycogen synthase gene expression (RT-Real time PCR) in liquid nitrogen.  The independent t-test and one-way analysis of variance were used for statistical analysis at the p<0.05 level.

The glycogen synthase levels in the aerobic exercise group were higher than the prediabetes group and had a significant effect on glycogen synthase expression (p=0.001). Also, liver glycogen showed significantly increase (p=0.001) in the amount of hepatic glycogen stores in the exercise group compared to the prediabetes group.

Aerobic exercise can lead to the improvement of the condition from pre-diabetic to healthy condition.