Evidence Hub

Exercise Prevents Enhanced Postoperative Neuroinflammation and Cognitive Decline and Rectifies the Gut Microbiome in a Rat Model of Metabolic Syndrome

Xiaomei Feng, Yosuke Uchida, L. Koch, S. Britton, Jun Hu, David Lutrin, M. Maze

Frontiers in Immunology, 2017

50 citations

Abstract

Introduction Postoperative cognitive decline (PCD) can affect in excess of 10% of surgical patients and can be considerably higher with risk factors including advanced age, perioperative infection, and metabolic conditions such as obesity and insulin resistance. To define underlying pathophysiologic processes, we used animal models including a rat model of metabolic syndrome generated by breeding for a trait of low aerobic exercise tolerance. After 35 generations, the low capacity runner (LCR) rats differ 10-fold in their aerobic exercise capacity from high capacity runner (HCR) rats. The LCR rats respond to surgical procedure with an abnormal phenotype consisting of exaggerated and persistent PCD and failure to resolve neuroinflammation. We determined whether preoperative exercise can rectify the abnormal surgical phenotype. Materials and methods Following institutional approval of the protocol each of male LCR and male HCR rats were randomly assigned to four groups and subjected to isoflurane anesthesia and tibia fracture with internal fixation (surgery) or anesthesia alone (sham surgery) and to a preoperative exercise regimen that involved walking for 10 km on a treadmill over 6 weeks (exercise) or being placed on a stationary treadmill (no exercise). Feces were collected before and after exercise for assessment of gut microbiome. Three days following surgery or sham surgery the rats were tested for ability to recall a contextual aversive stimulus in a trace fear…

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free