Sina Azadnajafabad, Sahar Saeedi Moghaddam, Esmaeil Mohammadi, Negar Rezaei, Nazila Rezaei, Shohreh Naderimagham, Rosa Haghshenas, Erfan Ghasemi, Yosef Farzi, Elham Abdolhamidi, Sahar Mohammadi Fateh, Hossein Zokaei, Ameneh Kazemi, Ozra Tabatabaei-Malazy, Farshad Farzadfar, Bagher Larijani,
Volume 20, Issue 1 (25th Anniversary of the Foundation, Special Issue 2021)
Abstract
Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) are the major cause of premature death and disability due to diseased globally, imposing a heavy burden on the health systems. Four main categories of NCDs are cardiovascular diseases, neoplasms, diabetes, and chronic respiratory diseases. Iran, the second greatest country in the Middle East Region, has been through an important transition period of communicable diseases toward NCDs in the last decades. One of the effective approaches to control NCDs is implementation of population-based studies and interventions, trying to reduce risk factors and incidence of NCDs through investigations in the populations. Endocrinology and Metabolism Research Institute (EMRI) and Non-Communicable Diseases Research Center (NCDRC) are the pioneers trying to study and control various NCDs during the last decades in Iran. In this review, we are going to inspect some of the major completed and ongoing projects of this research institute to highlight valuable efforts to reduce burden of NCDs in Iran, and make a successful example for national and regional public health policy makers and authorities.
Mahdi Maghami, Saeed Keshavarz, Rouhollah Haghshenas, Elham Eftekhari,
Volume 21, Issue 4 (10-2021)
Abstract
Background: 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.
Methods: 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.
Results: 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).
Conclusion: 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.
