Chronic effects of moderate intensity endurance training on neuropathic pain symptoms in diabetic rats

Introduction: Neuropathic pain is a chronic pain that occurs as an injury to neuronal cells and abnormality in nervous and immune systems function. Also diabetic neuropathy diseases accompany with variety of pain syndromes such as allodynia and hyperalgesia. Thus, the aim of the present study was to investigate the chronic effects of incremental activity in the form of endurance training on neuropathic pain in Streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats. Methods: Twenty eight adult male Wistar rats in the weight range of 326.3±8.4 gr, randomly assigned to four groups: diabetes and training, diabetes and not training, healthy and training and healthy and not training. -For inducing neuropathic pain, after twelve hours of food deprivation, intraperitoneal injection of STZ solution (45 mg/Kg) method was used. Two weeks after STZ injection, pain behaviors were measured with mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia tests. Then, the moderate intensity endurance training protocol was performed for six weeks and seventy two hours after the last training session, pain behavior tests were performed again. Results: Incremental activity in the form of moderate intensity endurance training led to significant improvement of mechanical allodynia and thermal hyperalgesia in rats. Also, in compare with diabetic control, training led to significant decrease in blood glucose levels in diabetic training group. Conclusion: Incremental activity in the form of moderate intensity endurance training could have chronic effects on neuropathic pain improvement. So, it is suggested that moderate intensity endurance training could be used as a non-pharmacotherapy intervention in the field of neuropathic pain for suffering patients.