Effects of Exercise, Training, and Diet on Muscle Citric Acid Cycle Enzyme Activity

The effects of training, exhaustive exercise, and diet on the activity of skeletal muscle citric acid cycle enzymes were studied. Training increased the activities of all cycle enzymes. Exhaustion of trained rats resulted in lowered activities of NAD-specific isocitrate dehydrogenase, succinate dehydrogenase, and cytochrome oxidase but citrate synthase and malate dehydrogenase were unaffected. The enzyme activities in untrained muscle were not changed by exhaustive exercise. High carbohydrate and high fat diets did not alter citric acid cycle activities in trained rested or untrained rested rats and did not moderate or accentuate the effects of exhaustive exercise. The results indicate that muscle citric acid cycle activity is increased by training and decreased by exhaustion of trained animals.