The purpose of present study was to examine the effect of eight weeks endurance training with crocin consumption on MAP-Tau and NFG gene expression in rats treated with trimethytin (TMT) as a model of Alzheimer’s disease.

In this experiment, forty mature Sprague-dawley male rats were subjected to Alzheimer’s disease through intraperitoneally injection of 8 mg/kg Trimethytin (TMT) and then were divided into 1) Alzheimer-infected control group, 2) endurance training, 3) endurance training + crocin, 4) crocin, and 5) sham to study the impact of the disease on the variables. Eight healthy rats were assigned to the control group. The rats in the second and the third groups ran on a rat treadmill with the speed of 15 to 20 meters per minute for 15 to 30 minutes in each session, 3 times a week for 8 weeks. The rats in the third and the fourth groups received daily IP injections of 25 mg/kg body weight of crocin for 8 weeks. MAP-Tau and NFG gene expression in hippocampi were measured through Real-time PCR. To analyze the results of the tests, one-way ANOVA, Tukey post hoc test, and two-way ANOVA were run using SPSS-22.

The results indicated that TMT injection increases the MAP-Tau gene expression in the Alzheimer-infected control group compare to the healthy control group (P=0.001). After eight weeks intervention, MAP-Tau gene expression was decreased in endurance training (P=0.03), endurance training + crocin (P=0.02) and crocin groups (P=0.001) and the decrease of MAP-Tau gene expression was greater in the training + crocin group. Results also demonstrated that NGF gene expression was increased in endurance training (P=0.02), endurance training + crocin (P=0.03) and crocin (P=0.01) groups and the increase of NGF gene expression was greater in the saffron intake group.

Generally, it seems that endurance training improves Alzheimer’s disease in rats and crocin consumption enhances these effects.