Evaluation of effects of physical exercise and iron supplementation on locomotor activity in an animal model of Restless Legs Syndrome.

• Grant number: 15/09490-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: March 01, 2016
• End date: February 28, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Physical Education
• Principal Investigator: Andrea Maculano Esteves
• Grantee: Paulo Daubian Rubini dos Santos Nosé
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Aplicadas (FCA). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Limeira , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) is a multifactorial pathology, something about 1/3 of your cases is secondary to other conditions, like pregnancy. Among nonpharmacological treatment, the physical exercise and the iron supplementation have been used to reduce the RLS symptoms in humans. The presence of RLS in pregnancy rats were recently demonstrated in a study realized by our group, nevertheless the evaluation of nonpharmacological treatment's effects (physical exercise and iron supplementation) in this animal model does not analyzed yet. Thus the main objective of the present study is evaluate the effects of physical exercise and iron supplementation on locomotor activity of pregnancy rats. Furthermore once that pathology involves the dopaminergic system, we going to verify if exist some alteration in the expression of dopaminergic receptors after the practice of physical exercise. To realize this study, will be necessary the utilization of Wistar rats with 60 years old. The animals will be distributed in 4 groups: Control (nonpregnancy and pregnancy), pregnancy physical exercise, pregnancy iron supplementation and pregnancy physical exercise iron supplementation. All rats of each one group will be submitted to environmental Open Field adaptation test, which will be utilized to evaluate the locomotor comportment. One week after the adaptation, all rats will be submitted again to Open Field, during 10 minutes, consisting the baseline assessment. All of assessments compassing the scheduled 9 am to 11 am. After the baseline assessment, all rats of pregnancy groups will be submitted to male presence, inducing the pregnancy state, and, when the state will confirmed, will be evaluated in the Open Field test on days 3, 10, 17 and 21 of pregnancy. The rats of iron supplementation group will be submitted to the diet during all pregnancy period, and, the rats of physical exercise group will perform physical exercise controlled sessions (swimming) 6x per week until the 20th day of pregnancy. The nonpregnancy rats will be available in the Open Field test in the same day of the pregnancy rats. Finally, the hepcidin, dopamine and your receptors will be quantified and correlated with the physical exercise practice and with the iron supplementation.