The Effect of Acute Exercise on Serum Vaspin Level and Its Relation to Insulin Sensitivity in Overweight Elderly Men

Background: Vaspin is a new discovered adipocytokine which is a member of serine protease inhibitor family secreted from adipose tissue and might play a role in insulin sensitivity. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of acute exercise on serum vaspin levels and its relation to insulin sensitivity in overweight elderly men.

Materials and Methods: In this semi-experimental study, 12 healthy elderly men volunteers randomly selected and performed one session aerobic exercise including 30 minutes of cycling at 70-75% of HRmax, which was followed by 30 minutes of recovery. Three blood samples were taken before exercise, immediately after exercise and after 30 minutes of recovery. Data were analyzed by repeated measure ANOVA and Bonferroni test and Pearson’s correlations were performed to identify possible relationship among the assessed variables. Statistical significance was set at p≤0.05.

Results: There were no significant differences for vaspin across time. Insulin and glucose concentration and insulin resistance decreased immediately after exercise. However insulin concentration and insulin resistance returned to pre-exercise level at the end of recovery. Furthermore, no significant correlations were observed among the variables assessed except for the expected between insulin level and insulin resistance.

Conclusion: These results indicate that a sub-maximal aerobic workout does not result in significant changes in vaspin levels in elderly men. Furthermore, we observed that vaspin is not associated with insulin sensitivity in this study.