Investigation of Exercise-Induced Myokines and Adipokines

Recent work in the laboratory at the Joslin Diabetes Center and elsewhere has shown that when small animals exercise they improve their muscles and improve their blood sugar levels. Also, these animals show changes in their abdominal fat tissue, compared to animals that did not exercise. Our data suggest that factors released from exercised muscle and fat tissue from exercised mice also has a positive effect on other tissues in the same animal. Therefore, there could be new factors or hormones, which come from the trained animals' muscles or fat tissue and which exert a positive effect on the animals' blood sugar levels. Large studies with human volunteers have shown that exercise can improve blood sugar uptake into skeletal muscle and lower blood sugar levels, thereby preventing type 2 diabetes. The purpose if this study is to evaluate if a single exercise bout leads to changes in circulating factors in the blood. We plan to detect if there are hormones being produced in the body that have a beneficial effect elsewhere in the body.