earticle

영어

Autism is a complex developmental disorder with impairments in social interaction, communication, repetitive behavior and motor skills. Exer-cise enhances cognitive function, ameliorates motor dysfunction, and provides protective profits against neurodegeneration. In the present study, we evaluated the effect of treadmill exercise on the motor coor-dination and Purkinje cell loss in relation with reactive astrocytes and microglial activation in the cerebellum using valproic acid (VPA)-in-duced autism rat model. On the 12th day of pregnancy, the pregnant rats in the VPA-exposed group received intraperitoneal injections of 600-mg/kg VPA. After birth, the rat pups were divided into four groups: the control group, the exercise group, the VPA-treated group, the VPA- treated and exercise group. The rat pups in the exercise groups were forced to run on a treadmill for 30 min once a day, 5 times a week for 4 weeks. In the present results, motor balance and coordination was dis-turbed by induction of autism, in contrast, treadmill exercise alleviated motor dysfunction in the autistic rats. Purkinje cell loss, reactive astro-cytes, and microglial activation were occurred by induction of autism, in contrast, treadmill exercise enhanced survival rate of Purkinje neu-rons through inhibition of reactive astrocytes and microglia in the autis-tic rats. The present study showed that exercise may provide a potential therapeutic strategy for the alleviation of motor dysfunction in autistic patients.