the role of quercetin and exercise in modulating apoptosis and cardiomyopathy via pi3k/akt/foxo3 pathways in diabetic obese rats

Objective: quercetin and exercise both have antidiabetic effects through decreasing blood glucose while increasinginsulin sensitivity. therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the effects of high-intensity interval training (hiit)and moderate-intensity continuous training (mict) exercises along with quercetin administration on apoptosis andcardiomyopathy in diabetic obese rats.materials and methods: in this experimental study, 35 male wistar rats [diabetic rats for experimental groups andnormal rats for healthy control (hc)] were divided into seven groups (for each group n=5): hc, diabetic control (dc),diabetic quercetin control (dqc), diabetic hiit (dht), diabetic mict (dmt), dht with quercetin (dqht) and dmtwith quercetin (dqmt). the rats were fed a high-fat diet (hfd) for 8 weeks and a low dose of streptozotocin (stz)was administered to create a model of type 2 diabetes mellitus (t2dm). eight weeks of hiit and mict with or withoutquercetin treatment were performed. quercetin was used at 15 mg/kg, as a suspension in carboxymethyl cellulose(cmc) at a concentration of 0.5%. one-way analysis of variance with lsd’s post-hoc test with a significant level ofp≤0.05 was used to analyze data.results: just 8 weeks of hiit and mict protected the protein content of pi3k, akt, and foxo3 and caspase-8 (casp-8) gene expression in heart tissues (p<0.05). quercetin and both training protocols decreased blood glucose, whileimproving inflammatory markers and the lipid profile (p<0.05).conclusion: reduction in blood glucose along with improvements in the inflammatory markers and the lipid profile byquercetin injection may be a promising approach for the development of new antidiabetic medications. in addition, bothtraining protocols showed potentially successful diabetic cardiomyopathy treatments through modulating the foxo3and pi3k/akt pathways.