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Abstract
Background
Creatine supplementation is known to exert an effect by increasing strength in high intensity and short duration exercises. There is a hypothesis which suggests that creatine supplementation may provide antioxidant activity by scavenging Reactive Oxygen Species. However, the antioxidant effect of creatine supplementation associated with resistance training has not yet been described in the literature. Therefore, we investigated the effect of creatine monohydrate supplementation associated with resistance training over maximum strength gain and oxidative stress in rats.
Methods
Forty male Wistar rats (250-300 g, 90 days old) were randomly allocated into 4 groups: Sedentary (SED, n = 10), Sedentary + Creatine (SED-Cr, n = 10), Resistance Training (RT, n = 10) and Resistance Training + Creatine (RT-Cr, n = 10). Trained animals were submitted to the RT protocol (4 series of 10–12 repetitions, 90 second interval, 4 times per week, 65% to 75% of 1MR, for 8 weeks).
Results
In this study, greater strength gain was observed in the SED-Cr, RT and RT-Cr groups compared to the SED group (P < 0.001). The RT-Cr group showed a higher maximum strength gain when compared to other groups (P < 0.001). Creatine supplementation associated with resistance training was able to reduce lipoperoxidation in the plasma (P < 0.05), the heart (P < 0.05), the liver (P < 0.05) and the gastrocnemius (P < 0.05) when compared to control groups. However, the supplementation had no influence on catalase activity (CAT) in the analyzed organs. Only in the heart was the CAT activity higher in the RT-Cr group (P < 0.05). The activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD) was lower in all of the analyzed organs in the SED-Cr group (P < 0.05), while SOD activity was lower in the trained group and sedentary supplemented group (P < 0.05).
Conclusions
Creatine was shown to be an effective non-enzymatic antioxidant with supplementation alone and also when it was associated with resistance training in rats.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1550-2783-11-11) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Copyright comment
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1550-2783-11-11) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Copyright comment
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Acknowledgments
This work was funded by the Universidade Federal de Ciências da Saúde de Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors’ contributions
SGP, NRB, DZA, AJP conception and design of research; SGP, NRB, DZA, AJP, POM, DDM performed experiments; SGP, NRB, DZA, AJP, POM, DDM, RRC, LPD analyzed data; SGP, NRB, DZA, AJP, POM, DDM, RRC, LPD interpreted results of experiments; SGP, NRB, DZA, AJP prepared figures; SGP, NRB, DZA, AJP, POM, DDM, RRC, LPD drafted manuscript; SGP, NRB, DZA, AJP, POM, DDM, RRC, LPD edited and revised manuscript; SGP, NRB, DZA, AJP, POM, DDM, RRC, LPD approved final version of manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
