The impact of voluntary exercise on relative telomere length in a rat model of developmental stress

BMC Research Notes

Sian MJ Hemmings³  Soraya Seedat³  Martin Kidd⁴  Vivienne A Russell²  Kishor Bugarith²  Laurian Grace²  Martmari Botha¹ 

[1] Department of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Tygerberg, South Africa;Department of Human Biology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa;Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Tygerberg, South Africa;Centre for Statistical Consultation, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

关键词: Relative telomere length;    Exercise;    Stress;   

Others  :  1165014
DOI  :  10.1186/1756-0500-5-697

 received in 2012-08-24, accepted in 2012-12-18,  发布年份 2012

【 摘 要 】

Background

Exposure to early adverse events can result in the development of later psychopathology, and is often associated with cognitive impairment. This may be due to accelerated cell aging, which can be catalogued by attritioned telomeres. Exercise enhances neurogenesis and has been proposed to buffer the effect of psychological stress on telomere length. This study aimed to investigate the impact of early developmental stress and voluntary exercise on telomere length in the ventral hippocampus (VH) and prefrontal cortex (PFC) of the rat. Forty-five male Sprague–Dawley rats were categorised into four groups: maternally separated runners (MSR), maternally separated non-runners (MSnR), non-maternally separated runners (nMSR) and non-maternally separated non-runners (nMSnR). Behavioural analyses were conducted to assess anxiety-like behaviour and memory performance in the rats, after which relative telomere length was measured using qPCR.

Results

Maternally separated (MS) rats exhibited no significant differences in either anxiety levels or memory performance on the elevated-plus maze and the open field compared to non-maternally separated rats at 49 days of age. Exercised rats displayed increased levels of anxiety on the day that they were removed from the cages with attached running wheels, as well as improved spatial learning and temporal recognition memory compared to non-exercised rats. Exploratory post-hoc analyses revealed that maternally separated non-exercised rats exhibited significantly longer telomere length in the VH compared to those who were not maternally separated; however, exercise appeared to cancel this effect since there was no difference in VH telomere length between maternally separated and non-maternally separated runners.

Conclusions

The increased telomere length in the VH of maternally separated non-exercised rats may be indicative of reduced cellular proliferation, which could, in turn, indicate hippocampal dysfunction. This effect on telomere length was not observed in exercised rats, indicating that voluntary exercise may buffer against the progressive changes in telomere length caused by alterations in maternal care early in life. In future, larger sample sizes will be needed to validate results obtained in the present study and obtain a more accurate representation of the effect that psychological stress and voluntary exercise have on telomere length.

【 授权许可】

   
2012 Botha et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

Figure 1.

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