Effect of endurance and high intensity interval swimming training on cardiac structure and Hand2 expression of rats

Abstract

Introduction: Physiological hypertrophy following training manifests with cardiac mass changes. In addition, physical activities lead to Hand2 gene expression as an important gene in cardiac remodeling. The present study aimed to investigate the effects of endurance and high intensity interval Ttraining on Hand2 gene expression and cardiac changes. Method: For this intent, 24 male rats (age 3 months; weight 229.30 ± 15.7 grams) divided randomly into the control (n=6), sham (n=6), interval (n=6) and endurance (n=6) groups. The endurance group swam for 12 weeks/5 days per week whereas swimming time increased incrementally. In addition, interval group swam 12 weeks/4 days per week while the load to body weight ratio and time to rest ratio increased incrementally. Twenty-four hours later, heart weight and left ventricle weight, and Hand2 gene expression were measured. To assess the data, one-way ANOVA was utilized and schaffe test was used to point out the place of significancy (α ≤ 0.05). Results: Findings showed that heart and left ventricle weights after endurance and high intensity interval training were significantly more than the sham and control groups. In addition, Hand2 expression was changed significantly in the endurance (6.76) and interval (6.15) rather than the sham (1.05) and control groups(1 fold). Conclusion: In the situation of the present study, both of Endurance and Interval training regimens increase Hand2 gene expression, heart weight and left ventricle weight. Because of the shorter training time, high intensity interval training can be more beneficial to be executed.

Keywords

• Cardiac Hypertrophy
• Endurance training
• High Intensity Interval Training
• Hand2
• Rat