The interstitial lung diseases are poorly understood and there are currently no studies evaluating the association of physical exercise with an ACE2 activator (DIZE) as a possible treatment for this group of diseases. We evaluate the effects of pharmacological treatment with an angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 activator drug, associated with exercise, on the pulmonary lesions induced by bleomycin. From the 96 male Balb/c mice used in the experiment, only 49 received 8 U/kg of bleomycin (BLM, intratracheally). The mice were divided into control (C) and bleomycin (BLM) groups, sedentary and trained (C-SED, C-EXE, BLM-SED, BLM-EXE), control and bleomycin and also sedentary and trained treated with diminazene (C-SED/E, C-EXE/E, BLM-SED/E, BLM-EXE/E). The animals were trained five days/week, 1 h/day with 60% of the maximum load obtained in a functional capacity test, for four weeks. Diminazene groups were treated (1 mg/kg, by gavage) daily until the end of the experiment. The lungs were collected 48 h after the training program, set in buffered formalin and investigated by Gomori's trichrome, immunohistochemistry of collagen type I, TGF-b 1 , beta-prolyl-4-hydroxylase, MMP-1 and -2. The BLM-EXE/E group obtained a significant increase in functional capacity, reduced amount of fibrosis and type I collagen, decreased expression of TGF-b 1 and beta-prolyl-4-hydroxylase and an increase of metalloproteinase À1, À2 when compared with the other groups. The present research shows, for the first time, that exercise training associated with the activation of ACE2 potentially reduces pulmonary fibrosis.

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The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the fast transmission and spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is currently considered a serious health problem, requiring an effective strategy to contain SARS-CoV-2 dissemination. For this purpose, epitopes of the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) and sucleocapsid (N) proteins were identified by bioinformatics tools, and peptides that mimic these epitopes were chemically synthesized and then conjugated to superparamagnetic nanoparticles (SPMNPs). Three peptides from S protein and three from N protein were used as antigens in a conventional enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) against serum samples from COVID-19-positive patients, or from healthy donors, collected before the pandemic. Three peptides were effective as antigens in conventional peptide-based ELISA, achieving 100% sensitivity and specificity, with high accuracy. The best-performing peptides, p2pS, p1pN, and p3pN, were associated with superparamagnetic nanoparticles (SPMNPs) and were used to perform nanomagnetic peptide-based ELISA. The p2pS–SPMNP conjugate presented 100% sensitivity and specificity and excellent accuracy (area under the curve (AUC) = 1.0). However, p1pN and p3pN peptides, when conjugated to SPMNPs, did not preserve the capacity to differentiate positive sera from negative sera in all tested samples, yet both presented sensitivity and specificity above 80% and high accuracy, AUC > 0.9. We obtained three peptides as advantageous antigens for serodiagnosis. These peptides, especially p2pS, showed promising results in a nanomagnetic peptide-based ELISA and may be suitable as a precoated antigen for commercial purposes, which would accelerate the diagnosis process.

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