Effects of Endurance Exercise Training on Gastrointestinal Barrier
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abstract
The gastrointestinal (GI) tract is an important organ system that can affect exercise performance. Specifically, exercise causes a redistribution of blood flow away from the GI tract, which can alter GI barrier permeability. Therefore, in these experiments we investigated the effects of endurance exercise training on GI tight junction and nutrient transporter gene expression. Sixteen female Sprague Dawley rats (4 month old) were assigned to control (CON) or endurance exercisetraining (EXE) groups (n = 8 per group). EXE animals were trained on the treadmill for two weeks at a speed of 30 meters per minute at 0 incline for 60 minutes per day. CON and EXE animals were sacrificed (24 hours after the final training bout) and ileum was stored for analyses. Evaluation of the tight junction revealed that the ileum of EXE animals had significantly (p<0.05) lower CLDN1 mRNA expression compared to CON animals. However, no significant (p>0.05) changes were detected in OCLN or ZO1. Similarly, there were no significant (p>0.05) changes in the mRNA expression of six nutrient transporters (SLC 5A8, SLC 7A6, SLC 6A19, SLC 7A7, SLC 7A2, SLC 16A10). These findings suggest that two weeks of endurance exercise training does not result in any changes in the gene expression of key nutrient transporters. Likewise, exercise did not alter gene expression of OCLN (involved in regulation of the tight junction paracellular permeability barrier) or ZO1 (involved in signal transduction at cellcell junctions). Interestingly, exercise training reduced the expression of the tight junction gene CLDN1 (important for celltocell adhesion) that may be suggestive of a leaky gut following training.
