Exercise training attenuates diabetes-induced cardiac injury through increasing miR-133a and improving pro-apoptosis/anti-apoptosis balance in ovariectomized rats.

Figure 1. The plasma lipid profile after eight-week intervention (n=10). OVR; ovariectomized animals, OVR.D; ovariectomized with diabetes and OVR.D.E; ovariectomized with diabetes and an eight week swimming program. *Significant difference compared to healthy (sham group, P-value<0.05), **compared to sham (P-value<0.01) and OVR (P-value<0.05), #compared to sham, OVR and OVR.D animals (P-value<0.05)

Figure 2. MiR-133 expression levels in the cardiac tissue of four groups of animals (n=10). OVR; ovariectomized animals, OVR.D; ovariectomized with diabetes and OVR.D.E; ovariectomized with diabetes and an eight week swimming program. *Significant difference compared to healthy (sham, P-value<0.05), **compared to Sham and OVR animals (P-value<0.05), #compared to sham, OVR and OVR.D animals (P-value<0.05)

Figure 3. Bcl-2 protein level in the cardiac tissue of four groups of animals (n=10). OVR; ovariectomized animals, OVR.D; ovariectomized with diabetes and OVR.D.E; ovariectomized with diabetes and an eight week swimming program. *Significant difference compared to healthy (sham) animals (P-value<0.05), **compared to sham and OVR animals (P-value<0.05), #compared to sham, OVR, OVR.D animals (P-value<0.05)

Figure 4. The levels of apoptotic proteins caspase-3 and caspase-8 (A) and Bax (B) in the cardiac tissues of different studied groups (n=10). OVR; ovariectomized animals, OVR.D; ovariectomized with diabetes and OVR.D.E; ovariectomized with diabetes and an eight week swimming program. *Significant difference compared to healthy (sham) animals (P-value<0.05), **compared to sham (P-value<0.01) and OVR (P-value<0.05), #compared to OVR.D and sham animals (P-value<0.05)

Figure 5. Histological evaluation of myocardium under light microscopy using haematoxylin and eosin (H & E) stain (a, b, c and d) and periodic acid–Schiff (PAS) staining (e, f, g and h). H&E staining of the hearts in healthy (sham, a), OVR (b), OVR.D (c) and OVR.D.E (d). Striped cells of cardiac, oval, vesicular, pale and centrally located nucleus (a, black arrow), acidophilic sarcoplasm (b, red arrow), necrotic cells (b, c, d, blue arrow), tissue fibrosis (b, c, d, yellow arrow), leukocytes infiltration (c, black arrow). PAS staining presented the different storage of glycogen in the cardiac tissue muscle of sham (e), OVR (f), OVR.D (g) and OVR.D.E (h) animals. A homogeneous and uniform expansion of glycogen granules were seen in sarcoplasm (e). Compared to the healthy animals, in OVR and OVR.D groups (f and g) were seen fragmentation and irregular accumulation of glycogen granules (f)