Effects of physical training by blood pressure, heart rate and cardiac morphology in hypertensive rats

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of swimming on the cardiac morphological and hemodynamic changes in rats with hypertension induced by L-NAME.. Forty Wistar rats were divided into four groups: sedentary control (SC), trained control (TC), sedentary with L-NAME (LS) and trained with LNAME (LT). The animals in the training groups performed swimming lasting up to 60 min for four weeks. Animals in the L-NAME groups received 20 mg.kg-1 during four weeks. The results showed that animals in the LS group had higher mean arterial pressure (136.6±5.1 mmHg) compared to CS (107.1±1.8 mmHg). The LT group showed significant reductions in mean arterial pressure compared to LS (121.2±1.4 and 136.6±5.1 mmHg, respectively). On the other hand, the LT group animals still remained hypertensive compared to CT group (121.0±1.4 and 107.1±1.8 mmHg respectively). In relation to HR, was observed resting bradycardia for the trained animals. The groups CS and CT showed no changes in relative and absolute weight of the heart. An increase in the absolute weight of the heart to the LS group compared to the CS and also observed an increase in the relative and absolute weight for the LT group compared to CT. Histologic analysis showed that exercise training can reduce the amount of damage caused by chronic administration of L-NAME. In conclusion, we observed that mild exercise was effective in reducing mean arterial pressure in hypertensive rats. Additionally, exercise training did not induced cardiac hypertrophy, but the L-NAME increase the absolute and relative weight of the heart in sedentary and trained rats.