Preconditioning by the exercise and curcumin protects left ventricular myocardiumagainst ischemia-reperfusion injury and suppresses ventricular arrhythmias in rats

Introduction: the present study examined the effects of a 10-week preconditioning with moderateintensityaerobic exercise and curcumin supplementation before ischemia-reperfusion (ir) to investigateif this method contributes to the protection of cardiac myocardium against ir-induced injury and leftventricular dysfunction in rat.materials and methods: male wistar rats (6-8 weeks old) were randomly assigned to the 5 groups(each with 10 rats), sedentary-control (sed-con), sedentary ischemia-reperfusion (sed-ir), exercisewith ir (ex-ir), curcumin with ir (cu-ir), and both exercise and curcumin with ir (ex-cu-ir).exercise intervention performed five times a week for 10 weeks. after the training period, arrhythmiasand electrocardiogram parameters, factors involved in cardiac structure and function, and infarct size ofmyocardium were investigated.results: we observed that a 10-week moderate-intensity aerobic exercise (15-45 min at 12-24 m/min)five sessions a week as well as curcumin supplementation (50 mg/kg) over the mentioned period, inadvance to ir, significantly decreased ir-induced infarct size in ex-ir, cu-ir, and ex-cu-ir groupscompared to sed-ir (p = 0.0001), alleviated arrhythmia by reduction in ventricular ectopic beatsepisodes in ex-ir, cu-ir, and ex-cu-ir groups compared to sed-ir (p = 0.001), decreased ventriculartachycardia episods in ex-ir, cu-ir, and ex-cu-ir groups in comparison to that of sed-ir group (p =0.001) and improved cardiac function (p = 0.001).conclusion: according to our findings, exercise has superior cardioprotective effects than curcumin.the combination of curcumin and exercise has no preference on exercise or curcumin alone. hence both long-term aerobic exercise and curcumin supplementation are effective cardioprotectors against irinducedinjury.