Chronic effect of exercise on liver cholesterol of normal and hypercholesteremic rats

¹ Research Laboratory of the College of Physical Education, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington

Two groups of male albino rats of the Sprague-Dawley strain, with average initial body weights of about 265 g, were trained for 22 weeks on an exercise program of swimming one-half hour daily in water at 35 C. One trained group was fed a normal diet containing 18% casein. The other trained group received an isocaloric diet containing 1% cholesterol which was designed to produce hypercholesteremia. Two nonexercised groups, one fed the normal and the other the 1% cholesterol diet, served as controls. The adrenals and heart ventricles of both trained groups were larger than their respective controls. Exercise had no hypocholesteremic effect on the sera of either trained group. Fat and cholesterol accumulation in the livers of rats fed the 1% cholesterol diet were not affected by training, but training significantly lowered the fat and cholesterol of the livers of the normal rats.