Iranian Journal of

Background: Regular exercise training is an effective nonpharmacological strategy in the prevention of mortality and morbidity due to cardiovascular disease in patients with diabetes. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the effect of 8 weeks regular swimming exercise intervention on the cardiac levels of Matrix mettaloproteinase-2(MMP-2) and transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF- β1) in diabetic rats.

Methods: Twenty eight male Wistar rats with were randomly divided into 4 groups (7 rats per group) of control, diabetes, exercise, diabetes-exercise. Diabetes induced whit alloxan (90 mg/k g, intraperitoneally, ip) in rats. The animals exercised by swimming training at 5 min to 30 min per day, five days a week over 8 weeks. The rats were killed 72 h after the last treatments and cardiac MMP-2 activity and TGF- &beta;1 levels were evaluated by Zymography and ELIZA method. A one-way analysis of variance was used to data analysis (P<0.05).

Results: The results showed that the inducing of diabetes resulted in a significant increase in the levels of cardiac TGF-&beta;1 (P<0.001) and a decrease in the MMP-2 activity (P<0.001) compared with control group. Furthermore 8 weeks swimming training significantly attenuated the levels TGF-&beta;1 (P=0.001) and normalized MMP-2 activity (P=0.005) in trained diabetic rats.

Conclusion: It seems that regular swimming exercise may have great therapeutic potential in the treatment of diabetes-induced cardiac injury by suppressing elevation the levels of TGF-&beta;1 and upregulation of MMP-2 activity.