Introduction: Diabetes is a chronic and progressive metabolic disorder that causes heart tissue damage and changes in its protein levels. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an incremental training period on MMP-2 and MEF2C protein in cardiac muscle tissue of diabetic Wistar rats.
Methods: In this experimental study, 40 male Wistar rats (age 10 weeks and average weight 245 ± 9.5 grams) were randomly divided into 4 groups of 10: diabetes-control (DC), diabetes-exercise (DT), healthy-exercise (HT) and healthy-control (HC). Intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin (45 mg/kg) was used to cause diabetes. The training protocol was implemented for 6 weeks. 24 hours after the last training session, heart tissue was extracted. Western blot method was used to evaluate MMP-2 and MEF2C protein expression. Data analysis was done using one-way analysis of variance test.
Results: The results showed that diabetes causes a significant increase in MMP-2 protein expression levels and a significant decrease in MEF2C in the DC group compared to the HC group (P<0.05). although a period of increased training leads to a significant decrease in MMP-2 protein expression levels and a significant increase in MEF2C in the DT group compared to the DC group (P<0.05).
Conclusions: The findings of this research show that increasing aerobic exercise moderates the effects caused by diabetes in the expression of these two proteins, which seems to be a protective effect against cardiomyopathy changes caused by diabetes.