effect of interval training and curcumin on bax, bcl-2, and caspase-3 enzyme activity in rats

Background: apoptosis is a type of programmed cell death in extracellular organisms. high-intensity interval training and curcumin can make some changes in this process. objectives: this study aimed to investigate the role of intense interval training with curcumin supplementation on bax and bcl-2 proteins and caspase-3 enzyme activity in rats. methods: in this study, 48 elderly rats were randomly divided into four groups: (1) control, (2) training, (3) curcumin, and (4) training + curcumin. then, high-intensity interval training group rats ran on the treadmill for eight weeks, five sessions per week, for 30 - 50 min, and curcumin was fed to the supplement group at 25 mg/kg of body weight three times per week for eight weeks. gene expression levels of bax and bcl-2 and myocardial caspase enzyme were measured in the heart tissue. the shapiro-wilk test, one-way anova, and tukey test were used for data analysis.results: curcumin consumption and intense interval training increased the expression of bax (p = 0.001), bcl-2 (p = 0.002), and caspase (p = 0.001). besides, bax, bcl-2, and caspase genes expression significantly changed in the groups compared to the control group. the ratio of bax to bcl-2 in the curcumin group and interval training was significantly lower than the other groups. the tukey post hoc test confirmed a significant difference between the groups and the control group. conclusions: high-intensity interval training did not reduce bax protein, but the training and curcumin supplementation increased bcl-2 protein expression and neutralized the bax effect. curcumin supplementation combined with intense interval training resulted in synergy and reduced cell programming mortality.