【Animal modeling】-The effect of 6-week free runner exercise on sex hormones and hypothalamic-pituitary-testis axis in high-fat-fed male rats

  Objective: To observe the effect of high-fat diet on the structure of hypothalamus, pituitary, testis and sex hormone levels in adolescent male rats, and to explore the intervention effect of 6-week free wheel exercise.

  Methods: Forty 3-week-old male SD rats were randomly divided into normal diet control group (C group), normal diet exercise group (CE group), high-fat diet group (D group), and high-fat diet exercise group (Group DE). Groups C and D were fed quietly for 8 weeks, and groups CE and ED were fed with free wheeling for 6 weeks after 2 weeks of adaptive feeding, 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the afternoon each day, 5 days a week. After 8 weeks, blood was collected from the abdominal aorta of the rats to measure serum T, E2, FSH and LH; testis tissue homogenate was prepared to measure T and E2; hypothalamus, pituitary and testis tissue sections were prepared, and their structural changes were observed under light microscope.

  Results: (1) Compared with group C, the detection rate of serum T and E2 in group D was decreased, and the level of T in testis tissue was significantly decreased (P<0.05), while serum E2, FSH and LH were significantly increased (P<0.05). ; Vacuole lipid droplets appeared in the hypothalamus, both eosinophils and basophils in the pituitary decreased, the area of seminiferous tubules, the proportion of sperm cells and the number of Leydig cells decreased. (2) Compared with the D group, the serum T detection value and testis T value of the rats in the DE group were increased, while the serum E2, FSH and LH were significantly decreased (P<0.05). The number of eosinophils in the pituitary was significantly increased, the number of basophils did not change, and the area of seminiferous tubules in the testis tissue was higher but the difference was not significant.

  Conclusion: 6-week free wheel exercise can effectively improve the abnormal secretion of sex hormones and the imbalance of estrogen and male hormones caused by high-fat feeding rats, but it has no obvious effect on the pathological changes of the hypothalamus-pituitary-testis axis.