Effect of exercise on chemically-induced colitis in adiponectin deficient mice

BACKGROUND: Inflammatory bowel diseases are associated with increased adiponectin (APN) levels, which may exert pro-inflammatory effects in these individuals. Since habitual exercise may increase APN, the aim of this study was to determine how exercise training affects mice with acute colitis. METHODS: Male adiponectin knock out (APNKO) and wild type (WT) mice (C57BL/6) were randomly assigned to 4 different groups: 1) Sedentary (SED); 2) Exercise trained (ET); 3) Sedentary with dextran sodium sulfate (DSS) treatment (SED + DSS); and 4) Exercise trained with DSS (ET + DSS). Exercise-trained mice ran at 18 m/min for 60 min, 5d/wk for 4 weeks. Subsequently, the ET + DSS and the SED + DSS mice received 2% DSS in their drinking water for 5 days (d), followed by 5d of regular water. RESULTS: The clinical symptoms of acute colitis (diarrhea, stool haemoccult, and weight loss) were unaffected by exercise and there was no difference between the APNKO and WT mice (p > 0.05) except on day 39. However, the clinical symptoms of the DSS-treated APNKO mice were worse than WT mice treated with DSS and had increased susceptibility to intestinal inflammation due to increased local STAT3 activation, higher IL-6, TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-10 levels, and as a result had increased intestinal epithelial cell proliferation (p < 0.05). Exercise training significantly decreased pro-inflammatory cytokines including IL-6, TNF-α and IL-1β (p < 0.05) in the DSS + EX APNKO mice but had no effect on epithelial cell proliferation. Exercise was also found to significantly decrease the phosphorylation expression of STAT3 in both WT and APNKO mice in DSS + EX group when compared to DSS + SED. CONCLUSIONS: Exercise training may contribute in alleviating the symptoms of acute colitis and APN deficiency may exacerbate the intestinal inflammation in DSS-induced colitis.