Comparative Effects of Physical Training and Metformin in Diabetic Rats

摘要

Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disease associated with multiple organ damage, dysfunction and failure. Metforminis widely used to treat diabetes, but regular exercise also improves metabolic control in diabetic individuals andhas an important role in the management of this disease. In this work, we compared the effects of metformin and physicaltraining in diabetic male Wistar rats. Four groups of rats were used: (n=6 per group): sedentary control (SC), sedentarydiabetic (SD), trained diabetic (DT) and metformin diabetic (MD). Diabetes was induced with alloxan (30 mg/kg, b.w.).The physical training protocol consisted of a 1 h swimming session/day, five days/week for eight weeks with a load correspondingto 5% of the body weight. Metformin treatment consisted in 1.4 mg/ml per day, administered in the drinking water.At the end of the experimental period, the rats were sacrificed and blood was collected to measure serum glucose, insulinand albumin. Glycogen was quantified in gastrocnemius muscle, liver and heart, the protein/DNA ratio was mensuredin liver and heart triglycerides was also measured in the heart. Diabetes reduced the serum insulin and liver glycogenlevels and the protein/DNA ratio, but increased the serum glucose and heart glycogen levels; there were no significantvariations in serum albumin levels. Physical training increased the muscle glycogen level. Physical training and metforminwere equally effective in reducing the serum glucose concentration and in restoring the hepatic and cardiac glycogenstores and the hepatic protein/DNA ratio in diabetic rats. These results show that chronic exercise was as effective asmetformin in improving the metabolic profile of diabetic rats and in preventing diabetes-induced alterations.