Effect of enhanced voluntary physical exercise on brain levels of monoamines in Huntington disease mice

Using the R6/1 mouse model of Huntington disease (HD), we have recently shown that voluntary physical activity was able to correct the depressive-like behaviours exhibited by the HD animals at a pre-motor symptomatic stage of the disease. Using the high performance liquid chromatography system, we have now evaluated the effect of exercise on monoamine metabolism in HD mice. We found that serotonin and its metabolite as well as dopamine and noradrenaline were reduced across several brain regions in female R6/1 animals. Our data also suggest that some of these neurochemical deficits were modulated by physical activity, in a genotype-region dependent manner. These newly identified changes could account for some of the behavioural effects of exercise previously reported in HD mice.