Abstract
Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive loss of nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons leading to dopamine depletion and problems of movement, emotions and cognition. While the pathogenesis of PD is not clear, damage of dopaminergic neurons by oxygen-derived free radicals is considered an important contributing mechanism.This study aimed to evaluate the role of treadmill exercise in male Wister rats as a single treatment and as an aid-therapy with L-dopa for rotenone-induced PD. To study the role of NRF2-ARE pathway as a mechanism involved in exercise associated improvement in rotenone rat model of PD.Method: Animals were divided into 5 groups, (Control, rotenone, rotenone\exercise, rotenone\L-dopa, and rotenone\exercise\L-dopa (combination) groups). After the PD induction, rats in the rotenone\exercise and combination groups were daily treadmill exercised for 4 weeks.Results: Treadmill exercise significantly improved behavioral and motor aspects of rotenone model of PD. When treadmill exercise introduced as a single intervention, it amended most behavioral aspects of PD, gait fully corrected, short-term memory, and motor coordination. Where L-dopa corrected locomotor activity and motor co-ordination but failed to improve short-term memory and only partially corrected the gait of rotenone-treated rats. When treadmill exercise was combined with L-dopa, all features of PD were corrected. It was found that exercise upregulated some of its associative genes to NRF2 pathways such as TFAM, NRF2, Noq.1 mRNA expression.Conclusion: This study suggests that forced exercise improved parkinsonian like features by activating NRF2 pathway.
Treadmill exercise in obese maternal rats during pregnancy improves short-term memory through neurogenesis in the hippocampus of rat pups