This study investigated the synergistic effect of early bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSC) transplantation and endurance training on exercise-induced ventricular ectopy, myocardial infarction-induced injury and cardiac function in rats. 90 male Wistar rats (7-8 weeks) randomly distributed following groups, 1: Healthy control (HC, n = 15), 2: Sham (Sham, n = 15), 3 Myocardial infarction (MI, n = 15), 4: Myocardial infarction with BM-MSC transplantation (MI-SC, n = 15), 5: Myocardial infarction with Endurance training (MI-ET, n = 15) and 6: Myocardial infarction with Endurance training and BM-MSC transplantation (MI-ET + SC, n = 15). Myocardial infarction was induced by permanent obstruction of the cardiac left anterior descending artery. One day after MI induction, 1 × 106 BM-MSC were injected via a caudal vein in MI-SC and MI-ET + SC groups, and training rat subjects were to run on a rodent treadmill for 10 weeks. BM-MSC alone decreased serum LDH, CK-MB, left ventricular Bax, and infarction size, and promoted serum IL-10, cardiac function and exercise capacities. These effects would be stronger if cell therapy was combined with exercise training. Cell therapy insignificantly decreased TNF-α and promoted left ventricular Bcl-2, but cell therapy with exercise training significantly reduced TNF-α and promoted Bcl-2. Despite the greater reduction of cardiac arrhythmia after exercise in the MI-ET + SC group, there was no significant difference between the treatment groups. The results of this study showed that exercise training and BM-MSC transplantation synergistically promoted myocardial infarction-induced injury healing and reduced ventricular ectopy after exercise in myocardial infarction rats via inflammation and apoptosis reduction.
Keywords: Cell therapy; Exercise training; Inflammation and apoptosis; Myocardial infarction; Ventricular ectopy.
© 2026. The Author(s) under exclusive licence to University of Navarra.