Exercise Rehabilitation Response with Electrical Stimulation on Serum ICAM and VCAM Levels of Rats with Myocardial Infarction

Control of inflammatory factors after myocardial infarction is one of the factors affecting the recovery of myocardial infarction patients due to lack of adequate myocardial blood flow. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effect of exercise rehabilitation with electrical stimulation on serum ICAM and VCAM levels in rats with myocardial infarction.

In this experimental study, 40 Wistar rats (8 weeks old, weight 220±30g) were randomly divided into four groups after infarction: infarction, infarction-exercise rehabilitation, infarction-electrical stimulation, and infarction-exercise rehabilitation-electrical stimulation. Myocardial infarction was induced by two subcutaneous injections of isoproterenol (150 mg/kg) 24 hours apart. The intervention groups underwent one session of exercise rehabilitation (treadmill at 20 m/min for 1 hour) and electrical stimulation (foot shock device at 0.5 mA for 20 minutes). Immediately after the intervention, the levels of ICAM and VCAM in the serum were determined by ELISA. One-way ANOVA and Tukey post hoc test were used to analyze the data at the significance level of P<0.05.

The results showed that electrical stimulation caused a significant increase (P=0.021) in serum ICAM levels in infarct samples. However, serum VCAM levels showed a significant decrease in the electrical stimulation (P=0.040) and electrical stimulation-exercise rehabilitation (P=0.038) groups.

According to the results, it is not yet possible to determine with certainty the direction of the effect of acute exercise rehabilitation and electrical foot shock stimulation on adhesion molecules.