The study conducted on animals demonstrated how exercise can induce formation of new blood vessels and drugs imitating this effect may one day treat diabetes
Diabetes one of the foremost cause of amputation or even death all over the world. It affects the blood vessels as it narrows them leading to risk of heart attacks and stroke and prevents formation of new blood vessels. Now researchers at Medical College of Georgia found what is claimed as the first evidence that with exercises this consequence of diabetes can be countered and pointing to drugs that are already being develop could mimic these effects of exercise to treat patients suffering from diabetes.
The researchers in this study focused on natural ability of body to grow new blood vessels, this process is known as angiogenesis, and how exercise promotes it using exosomes, which are packages containing important biological cargo. Diabetes disrupts the biological functions of the antioxidant SOD3 and the protein ATP7A that are maintaining healthy levels of reactive oxygen important for cell signaling and the delivering copper minerals to cells, respectively. The team performed tests designed for exploring how exercise alters the exosomes’ contents delivering cargo to endothelial cells that line the blood vessels and play an important role in angiogenesis.
The team put the mice on two-week running wheel program and assigned a 45 minute cardio session of moderate intensity to human adults of middle-age. The team found that in both the groups the exosomes delivered the ATP7A protein to the endothelial cells and higher amount of SOD3. Although, this did not affected the mice weight so significantly, the team observed increased endothelial function and essential markers for angiogenesis like vascular endothelial growth factor. According to the scientists, with the results of this study, development of synthetic exosomes can become a new interest of scientists to recreate this effect.