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This is the first study to analyze the association of accelerometer-measured patterns of habitual physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior (SB) with serum BDNF in individuals with coronary heart disease. A total of 30 individuals (M = 69.5 years; 80% men) participated in this pre-post study that aimed to test a multi-behavioral intervention. All participants underwent standardized measurement of anthropometric variables, blood collection, self-administered survey, and accelerometer-based measurement of PA and SB over seven days. Serum BDNF concentrations were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kit. We applied separate multiple linear regression analysis to estimate the associations of baseline SB pattern measures, light and moderate-to-vigorous PA with serum BDNF (n = 29). Participants spent 508.7 ± 76.5 min/d in SB, 258.5 ± 71.2 min/d in light PA, and 21.2 ± 15.2 min/d in moderate-to-vigorous PA. Per day, individuals had 15.5 ± 3.2 numbers of 10-to-30 min bouts of SB (average length: 22.2 ± 2.1 min) and 3.4 ± 1.2 numbers of > 30 min bouts of SB (average length: 43.8 ± 2.4 min). Regression analysis revealed no significant associations between any of the accelerometer-based measures and serum BDNF. The findings of this study did not reveal an association of accelerometer-measured PA and SB pattern variables with serum BDNF in individuals with coronary heart disease. In addition, our data revealed a considerable variation of PA and SB which should be considered in future studies.
Small animal models are frequently used to improve our understanding of the molecular and biological signaling pathways underlying the beneficial effects of physical activity and exercise. Unfortunately, when running wheels are employed, mice and rats are often kept single-housed to determine the individual running distance of each animal. However, social isolation can be stressful for rodents, and may alter an individual’s propensity for or response to exercise. For example, increased stress from single housing may significantly affect the results when investigating systemic metabolic responses to exercise. We have combined two already available and well-established systems, a radiotelemetry system and a running wheel, to determine spontaneous cage activity (SCA) as well as voluntary exercise (VE) levels of the individual animal in group-housed rodents. Further, we developed a simple software tool which allows monitoring and analyzing the data. Specifically, the radiotelemetry-system utilizes radio-frequency identification via a small, implanted chip to determine the location of each animal. Since, in addition to the animals’ position, also the location of the running wheel in the cage is known, the conclusion of which animal is exercising can be drawn. The developed software enables a fast and reliable assignment of the VE data to the individual animal and a simple analysis of the data collected. Hence, our combined method may be used to investigate the beneficial effects of physical activity, as well as the impact of therapeutic interventions on animal behavior in group-housed rodents.