Effects of obesity and exercise on testicular leptin signal transduction and testosterone biosynthesis in male mice
AJP Regulatory Integrative and Comparative Physiology
Published online on January 18, 2017
Abstract
To explore the role of the testicular leptin and JAK-STAT(LEP-JAK-STAT) pathway in testosterone biosynthesis during juvenile stages and exercise for weight loss, male C57BL/6J mice were randomly divided into normal-diet (ND) and high-fat diet (HFD) groups. After 10 weeks, mice in the HFD group were further divided randomly into obese control (OC), obese moderate-volume exercise (OME), and obese high-volume exercise (OHE) groups. Mice in the OME group were provided with 2 h/day, 6 days/week swimming exercise for 8 weeks and mice in the OHE group underwent twice the amount of daily exercise intervention as the OME group. The results showed that high-fat diet causes obesity, leptin resistance, inhibition of the testicular LEP-JAK-STAT pathway, decreased mRNA and protein expression of SF-1, StAR, and P450scc, decrease in the serum T/E2 ratio, and decline in sperm quality parameters. Both moderate and high-volume exercise were able to reduce body fat and increase the mRNA and protein expression of LEP-JAK-STAT, but only moderate exercise significantly increased the mRNA and protein expression of SF-1, StAR, and P450scc, and significantly reversed the serum T/E2 ratio and sperm quality parameters. These findings suggest that by impairing the testicular LEP-JAK-STAT pathway, early-stage obesity inhibits the biosynthesis of testosterone and sexual development and reduces male reproductive potential. Long-term moderate and high-volume exercise can effectively reduce body fat and improve obesity-induced abnormalities in testicular leptin signal transduction, whereas only moderate-volume exercise can reverse the negative impacts of obesity on male reproductive function.