Antioxidant intervention is considered to inhibit reactive oxygen species (ROS) and alleviates hyperglycemia. Paradoxically, moderate exercise can produce ROS to improve diabetes. The exact redox mechanism of these two different approaches remains largely unclear. Here, by comparing exercise and antioxidants intervention on type 2 diabetic rats, we found moderate exercise upregulated compensatory antioxidant capability and reached a higher level of redox balance in the liver. In contrast, antioxidant intervention achieved a low-level redox balance by inhibiting oxidative stress. Both of these two interventions could promote glucose catabolism and inhibit gluconeogenesis through activation of hepatic AMPK signaling, therefore ameliorating diabetes. During exercise, different levels of ROS generated by exercise have differential regulations on the activity and expression of hepatic AMPK. Moderate exercise-derived ROS promoted hepatic AMPK glutathionylation activation. However, excessive exercise increased oxidative damage and inhibited the activity and expression of AMPK. Overall, our results illustrate that both exercise and antioxidant intervention improve blood glucose in diabetes by promoting redox balance, despite different levels of redox balance. These results indicate that the AMPK signaling activation, combined with oxidative damage markers, could act as a sensitive biomarker, reflecting the threshold of redox balance defining effective treatment in diabetes. These findings provide theoretical evidence for the precise treatment of diabetes by antioxidants and exercise.

No abstract

Antioxidant intervention is considered to inhibit reactive oxygen species (ROS) and alleviates hyperglycemia. Paradoxically, moderate exercise can produce ROS to improve diabetes. The exact redox mechanism of these two different approaches remains largely unclear. Here, by comparing exercise and antioxidants intervention on type 2 diabetic rats, we found moderate exercise upregulated compensatory antioxidant capability and reached a higher level of redox balance in the liver. In contrast, antioxidant intervention achieved a low-level redox balance by inhibiting oxidative stress. Both of these two interventions could promote glycolysis and aerobic oxidation mediated by hepatic AMPK activation, ameliorating diabetes. During exercise, different levels of ROS generated by exercise have differential regulations on the activity and expression of hepatic AMPK. Moderate exercise-derived ROS promoted hepatic AMPK glutathionylation activation. However, excess exercise increased oxidative damage, and inhibited the activity and expression of AMPK. Overall, our results illustrate that both exercise and antioxidant intervention improve blood glucose in diabetes by promoting redox balance, despite the levels of redox balance are different. Moreover, the activation and expression of AMPK could act as a biomarker to reflect the effective treatment range for diabetes. This finding provides theoretical evidence for the precise regulation of diabetes by antioxidants and exercise.