Research Article Deer Antler Extract Improves Fatigue Effect through Altering the Expression of Genes Related to Muscle Strength in Skeletal Muscle of Mice

Copyright © 2014 Jaw-Chyun Chen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Deer antler is a well-known traditional Chinese medicine used in Asian countries for the tonic and the improvement of aging symptoms.The present study was designed to investigate the antifatigue effect and mechanism of Formosan sambar deer tip antler extract (FSDTAE). The swimming times to exhaustion of mice administered FSDTAE (8.2mg/day) for 28 days were apparently longer than those of the vehicle-treated mice in forced swim test. However, the indicators of fatigue, such as the reduction in glucose level and the increases in blood urea nitrogen and lactic acid levels, were not significantly inhibited by FSDTAE.Therefore, microarray analysis was further used to examine the anti-fatiguemechanism of FSDTAE.We selected genes with fold changes>2 or < −2 in skeletal muscle for pathway analysis. FSDTAE-affected genes were involved in 9 different signaling pathways, such as GnRH signaling pathway and insulin signaling pathway. All of the significantly expressed genes were classified into 8 different categories by their functions.Themost enriched categorywasmuscular system, and 6 upregulated genes, such as troponin I, troponin T1, cysteine and glycine-rich protein 2, myosin heavy polypeptide 7, tropomyosin 2, and myomesin family member 3, were responsible for th