Abstract

Background: Inflammation is a prominent risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. Then, lifestyle interventions such as exercise training, can target the inflammatory pathway. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of 4 weeks of aerobic training on the expression of IL-17 and IFN-γ in the hippocampus of rats with Alzheimer’s disease induced by amyloid-beta injection.

Methods: The 21 adult male Wistar rats were randomly divided into 3 groups of control (CG), Alzheimer’s, (AG) and Alzheimer’s+aerobic training (AAG). Beta-amyloid oligomers were used to induce Alzheimer’s disease in the hippocampus. A week after Alzheimer’s induction, rats of the AAG group performed exercise 5 days a week for 4 weeks. In the first and second weeks, the training session consisted of two 15 min sets with speed 10 m/m and a 5 min rest between sets. In the third and fourth weeks, the speed increased to 15 m/min and the number of sets to three and four 15 min, respectively (with 5 min rest between sets). After 4 weeks, hippocampal isolation from all rats and was used to evaluate cytokines gene expression.

Results: The results showed that IFN-γ gene expression was significantly lower in AAG group than AG group and significantly higher in the AAG and AG groups than CG group (p ≤ 0.05). Also, IL-17 gene expression was significantly lower in the AAG than AG group. While the IL-17 expression was significantly higher in the AG group than the CG group, there was no significant difference between the AAG and CG groups (p ≤ 0.05).
Conclusion: Aerobic training may help to alleviate the neuro-inflammation conditions that occur in Alzheimer’s disease by reducing the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-17 and IFN-γ.

Keywords: Aerobic training; Alzheimer; IFN-γ; IL-17; Neuroinflammation