Weight bearing training alleviates muscle atrophy and pyroptosis of middle-aged rats

Pengyu Fu; Lijing Gong; Luyao Yang; Shuning Tang; Fangyuan Ma

doi:10.3389/fendo.2023.1202686

Weight bearing training alleviates muscle atrophy and pyroptosis of middle-aged rats

Front Endocrinol (Lausanne). 2023 Aug 30:14:1202686. doi: 10.3389/fendo.2023.1202686. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Pengyu Fu^{1

2}, Lijing Gong², Luyao Yang^{2

3}, Shuning Tang^{2

4}, Fangyuan Ma^{2

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physical Education, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China.
² Key Laboratory of Physical Fitness and Exercise of Ministry of Education, Beijing Sport University, Beijing, China.
³ College of Education, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
⁴ School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
⁵ School of Life Sciences, Nankai University, Tianjin, China.

Abstract

Background: Age-related muscle atrophy and adipose accumulation begin to occur in young and middle-aged individuals, and exercise at an early age improves body composition. Pyroptosis may play an essential role in age-related low-grade inflammation. This study aimed to explore the alleviation of muscle atrophy by weight-bearing training with increasing age via inhibition of pyroptosis.

Methods: Ninety 8-month-old male SD rats were randomly divided into three groups: (1) normal baseline group (N group, n = 10), sacrificed after adaptive feeding; control group (C group, n = 40); and weight-bearing running group (R group, n = 40). Blood samples, adipose tissue (AT), and extensor digitorum longus (EDL) were collected after 8, 16, 24, and 32-weeks intervention.

Results: The body weight, muscle mass, fat mass, plasma lipid, AT wet weight, adipocyte cross-sectional area (CSA), and apoptosis rates of AT and EDL were increased, while the muscle mass, wet weight, and fiber CSA of EDL were decreased by aging, which were reversed by exercise. Weight-bearing training promoted protein synthesis in EDL, inhibited protein degradation in EDL, and expression of pyroptotic key proteins in EDL and AT in rats.

Conclusion: Weight-bearing training improves body composition and alleviates age-related muscle atrophy in rats, and its mechanism may be related to the inhibition of pyroptosis in the EDL and AT and the improvement of muscle protein metabolism.

Keywords: aging; muscle atrophy; obesity; pyroptosis; weight-bearing training.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adipose Tissue
Animals
Male
Muscles
Muscular Atrophy* / etiology
Muscular Atrophy* / therapy
Pyroptosis*
Rats
Rats, Sprague-Dawley

Grants and funding

This research was funded by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (grant number 2021TD012).