The effects of a high-protein diet and resistance training on organ mass and metabolic profile in rats

A high-protein diet associated or not with strength exercise impacts satiety, fat accumulation, mass gain, changes biochemical and morphological. The study evaluated the association between adipose tissue mass and organs, in addition to the blood biochemical profile of rats fed a high-protein diet (HD) submitted to strength training (RT). Adult male Wistar rats were divided into groups (n=7/each): sedentary-normoprotein (SN-14%), sedentary-hyperprotein (SH-35%), trained-normoprotein (TN-14%), and trained-hyperprotein (TH-35%). RT consisted of 4 sets of 10 water jumps/8 weeks. HD and RT reduced the adiposity index (p<0.001). Regardless of HD, RT increased the mass of the gastrocnemius (p<0.001) and soleus (p=0.01). Heart mass was inversely correlated (p<0.01) with retroperitoneal fat. There was an inverse dependence between the mass of the gastrocnemius and retroperitoneal (p<0.01), omental (p<0.05), subcutaneous inguinal (p<0.01), and visceral adiposity (p<0.05). There was a positive dependence between kidney mass and serum creatinine levels (p<0.001). Liver mass showed a positive dependence (p<0.01) on total cholesterol, HDL-c (p<0.01), and triglycerides (p<0.05). The results showed that isolated HD and associated with RT reduced the visceral adiposity, but did not increase the gastrocnemius and soleus mass. The participation of DH and TR stands out as measures of behavior tendency among the studied variables.