Combination of exercise and caloric restriction ameliorates nearly complete deleterious effects of aging on cardiovascular hemodynamic and antioxidant system parameters

Aging is a progressive and catabolic process by cells of the body are broken down. Study scrutinized the effects of exercise and caloric restriction in cardiovascular hemodynamics and antioxidant system parameters. Rats divided to 5 categories as 1 control group (including 3 months aged animals) and 4 test groups (including 15 months aged animals) named by A-SED (aged-sedentary), A-CR (aged-caloric restricted), A-EX (aged-exercised) and A-CR-EX (aged-(exercised + caloric restricted)) created by adding carbachol (CAR) and phenylephrine (PE) cumulatively and during 6 weeks, 40% caloric restriction and swimming were administered to aged animals. At the beginning and end of study, blood pressure (BP) and ECHO of the animals were measured. After decapitation process, tissue (heart and aorta) samples were collected. In tissue samples, apoptotic and oxidative stress parameters, and in blood samples NO levels were studied. Additionally, tissues were viewed as histologically at light microscopy. GraphPad Prism 5v. program was used for statistics and p<0.05 were considered significantly. Contraction-relaxation responses of aorta improved after CR and EX administrations (p<0.05). In both tissues, oxidative stress parameters (8-OHdG, MDA, SOD, GSH), caspase-3 activity and caspase-3 dansity were recovered meaningfully (p<0.05). Finally, NO levels were significantly recovered with CR and EX administrations in aged animals (p<0.05). To sum up, it is suggested that CR and EX administrations contribute to the recovery of hemodynamic and antioxidant system parameters in aged rats.