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Background: Nephropathy is a significant complication of diabetes mellitus, which is associated with high morbidity and mortality. Exercise training has been shown to have renoprotective effects in diabetes. Unregulated vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) has been demonstrated in the diabetic kidney. Thus, the aim of our study is to illustrate the impact of endurance exercise training on the renal VEGF expression in type I diabetic rats.

Methods: Forty normal Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into the following equal groups: sedentary control (SC), exercised control (EC), sedentary diabetic (SD) rats and exercised diabetic (ED) rats. Then, diabetes mellitus was induced by streptozotocin in the rats in the two diabetic groups. The expression of VEGF in the renal tissue in each of the four different groups was assessed by immunohistochemistry.

Results: Renal VEGF expression was significantly (P< 0.01) higher in SD compared with that in SC. However, exercise training significantly (P< 0.01) reduced VEGF expression in the renal tissue in ED compared with that in SD.

Conclusion: Our present data suggest that treadmill exercise training suppressed diabetes-induced upregulation in the renal VEGF expression.