Background and Aim: Obesity is an excessive accumulation of fat and its storage due to an imbalance between energy intake and energy consumption. High-fat diets, through inhibition of lipolysis enzymes can lead to increase in obesity and also many metabolic diseases. While exercise can activate these enzymes and lead to a change in the amount of visceral adipose tissue and reduce obesity. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of high intensity interval training (HIIT) and moderate intensity continuous training (MICT) on the content of perilipin 1, ATGL, and CGI-58 in visceral adipose tissue of obese male rats.
Material and Methods: Forty male Wistar rats were divided into five groups of eight. A group of 8 rats consumed standard diet (SD) for 10 weeks, and 32 other rats used high-fat diet (HFD) for 10 weeks. After induction of obesity, 8 rats from high fat diet group and 8 rats from standard dietary group were killed, and the samples were collected to study the effects of high-fat diet. Other obese rats were randomly divided into three groups: high-fat diet sedentary (HFD+SED), moderate-intensity continuous training protocol (MICT), and high-intensity interval training protocol (HIIT). The HIIT protocol consisted of 10 times of running, each time for 4 minutes, on a treadmill with an intensity of 90-85% VO2max, with 2 minutes active rest periods, and the MICT protocol included running on treadmill with an intensity of 70-65% VO2max, which had been matched with the HIIT protocol in terms of distance. 5 sessions of The training scheduals were performed per week for 12 weeks. Finally, the samples were collected by western blot method to measure the content of perilipin 1, ATGL, CGI-58.
Results: The results of this study showed that obesity caused a significant reduction in the content of prilipin 1, ATGL and CGI-58. While both moderate-intensity continuous training and high-intensity interval training significantly increased the content of perilipin 1 and ATGL (p≤ 0.05). Also, the high-intensity interval training led to a significant increase in CGI-58 content (p<0.05). While moderate-intensity continuous training did not result in significant changes in CGI-58 protein content.
Conclusion: The findings of this study showed that high-fat diet resulted in increased fat mass, as well as weight gain and obesity. On the contrary, exercise trainings can lead to a decrease in fat mass and weight loss by increasing the proteins and enzymes effective in the lipolysis process