Acute Aerobic Exercise Increases Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor In Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells Independently Of Exercise Intensity
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a neurotrophin playing an essential role in exercise-induced cognitive benefits. Although BDNF is mainly released by neurons, it is also produced by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), indicating a bidirectional relationship between nervous and immune systems. Previous findings demonstrate that BDNF is upregulated in PBMCs following high- (i.e., anaerobic threshold) and maximal-intensity exercise. However, it remains unclear if moderate exercise intensities, frequently recommended in exercise guidelines, are sufficient to also upregulate BDNF in immunes cells. PURPOSE: To evaluate BDNF in response to increasing exercise intensities in PBMCs from healthy young men. METHODS: PBMCs were collected from 10 healthy young men (mean [SD]: 22 [2] years, peak oxygen consumption (V̇O2peak) = 47.1 [4.7] mL/kg/min) before, immediately after, and up to 6 hours of post-exercise recovery from 30 min of low-, moderate-, and high-intensity semi-recumbent cycling (40%, 55%, and 70% of V̇O2peak, respectively). Changes in BDNF content were analyzed using Western blot, normalized to β-actin, and reported as a relative quantity (RQ) to the respective baseline. Heart rate was measured continuously. Data were analyzed using a two-way ANOVA with Tukey’s post-hoc comparison (α = 0.05). RESULTS: BDNF increased over time (p < 0.001), independent of exercise intensity (p = 0.545). Specifically, BDNF was elevated at end-exercise across all conditions (1.35 RQ [0.77], p = 0.012) and remained elevated following 6 hours of recovery (1.53 RQ [0.89], p = 0.002). End-exercise heart rate increased in an intensity-dependent manner (low: 113 bpm [5], moderate: 143 bpm [6], high: 163 bpm [7], all p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Regardless of intensity, acute aerobic exercise upregulates BDNF in PBMCs for up to 6 hours, indicating that BDNF may play a role in exercise-induced immune system responses. Considering the abundant health benefits associated with upregulated BDNF, our findings support the practice of exercise for a minimum of 30 min at intensities as low as 40% V̇O2peak in healthy young men. Further studies should investigate the BDNF response to exercise in women and older adults with and without age-associated diseases. FUNDING: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".