Pro‐ and anti‐angiogenic factors in human skeletal muscle in response to acute exercise and training

Abstract

Non‐technical summary Exercise training is a potent stimulus for capillary growth in skeletal muscle, but the precise mechanisms underlying the regulation of capillary growth in muscle remain unclear. We examined the effect of acute exercise and endurance training in male subjects, on a number of compounds believed to either promote or inhibit growth of capillaries in skeletal muscle. The results show that acute exercise increases the gene expression of both capillary growth‐promoting and ‐inhibiting compounds, suggesting that both positive and negative factors are needed for the precise control of growth. Training increased capillary growth but had little effect on gene and protein levels of the capillary growth‐promoting and ‐inhibiting factors, suggesting a similar potential for capillary growth in untrained and trained muscle. The study is one of the first addressing how the balance between a large number of positive and negative factors is affected in human muscle with exercise and training.