Preliminary study of the effect of aerobic exercise training on patients with metabolic syndrome

Objective: To explore the effect of long-term exercise on serum inflammatory adipokines and insulin sensitivity of patients with metabolic syndrome (MS). Methods: 20 sedentary patients with MS were studied before and after 12 weeks of aerobic exercise training. Patients were trained at anaerobic threshold intensity (30min/times) for 12 weeks (5 times/week). Serum leptin, IL-18, CRP and sICAM-1 concentration were measured by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay. Results: Serum leptin level of these patients were (26.38 +/- 10.85 unit) before exercise and decreased to (19.63 +/- 6.27 unit, P<0.05) after 12 weeks of exercise. Similar results were obtained (before vs. after exercise) for IL-18 (309.40 +/- 49.77 vs. 291.80 +/- 39.21, P<0.05), CRP (2.73 +/- 0.72 vs. 2.28 +/- 0.38, P<0.01), sICAM-1 (333.85 +/- 55.97 vs. 306.24 +/- 50.55, P<0.01) and HOMA-IR (4.53 +/- 2.39 vs. 2.89 +/- 0.69, P<0.01). Conclusion: Long-term exercise is one of the effective treatments of patients with MS. Its underlying mechanism may be associated with reduction of serum inflammatory adipokines concentration and improvement of insulin resistance.