Introduction: The effects of exercise on heart muscle angiogenesis is a significant and notable issue that less it has been studied and the results are very inconsistent. In this context, it is important to find an optimal exercise by which leads to the best angiogenesis. Therefore, we are going to evaluate the effects of high intensity interval training (HIIT) and moderate-intensity continuous training (MICT) on the gene expression of PGC1α and VEGF in the cardiac muscle tissue of male rats.
methodology: Twenty-four male Wistar rats randomly assigned to for groups including: HIIT (n=6), MICT (n=6), basic control (CO) (n=6) and control (CO8w) (n=6). After 2 weeks of familiarization on the treadmill, the rats in experimental groups run 5 times a week for 8 weeks. The speed of MICT protocol was 15 to 30 meters per minute, and it's duration was about 15 to 60 minutes. The speed of HIIT protocol was 28 to 55 meters per minute and took 8 weeks. Rats were sacrificed 48 hours after last training session, and the amount of gene expression was measured by real-time PCR technique. Data were analysis by ANOVA and Tukey post Hoc test with a P-value of less than 0.05.
Results: The results illustrated that 8 weeks of both MICT and HIIT training would lead to significantly increases in PGC1α gene expression in cardiac muscle (p=0.001). However, both of these training methods would not result in significantly increase in VEGF gene expression in cardiac muscle of rats (p=0.186).
Conclusion: It seems that both of HIIT and MICT training methods lead to the same effects on of PGC1α mRNA increases, but not in VEGF mRNA. Therefore, this could be as a result of the nature of cardiac muscle fiber as a high oxidation fiber.