Regular moderate exercise effects on pro-inflammatory cytokines of diabetic rat’s retina and optic nerve

Objectives: Tissue levels of cytokines represent of inflammation and forewarning of injury. In diabetic patients, these factors increase notably but don’t designate source of them. Retinopathy is one of the complications of diabetes mellitus that probably generates by reason of inflammatory damage in micro vascular or in retinal cells. Exercise decreases blood sugar and diabetic injurious. Investigation of IL-1 and TNF-a in retina in diabetic model rats and exercise effects on them were purposed of this study. Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, 40 adult Wistar male rats (250 ± 50 g) were used. They were randomly divided into four groups (n = 10): (1) Sedentary control (SC) group, (2) sedentary diabetic (SD) group, (3) 8-week healthy exercised (8HE) group and (4) 8-week diabetic exercised (8DE) group. A week after induction of diabetes by injection of streptozotocin, 60 min treadmill exercise and 5 days a week with 22 (m/min) speeds were undertaken. All groups were evaluated in terms of retina and optic nerve tissue levels of TNF-α and IL-1 using ELISA. Results: Based on the results, TNF- α tissue levels were decreased in the 8HE and increased in the 8DE groups compared to control, respectively. Also, no difference was observed in IL-1 tissue levels between exercised and control groups. Conclusion: Long term exercise protocol was useful in healthy rats but don’t decrease of pro-inflammatory retinal complication in diabetes mellitus.