Razi Journal of Medical Sciences

Background: There is a long history of using physical activities and herbal medications to cure psychological diseases such as stress and anxiety. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of training, extract of Althaea kurdica flower and noise stress on the anxiety of Wistar male rats.

Methods: Thirty-five male rats were randomly divided into five groups: the noise group (n=7), training+noise group (n=7), extract+noise group (n=7), training+noise +extract group (n=7), and the control group (n=7). The aerobic training was performed 5 days per week, for a 60-day period. The noise stress included exposure to traffic noise 5hrs/per day over a 60-day period (range: 95±15 dB). The althaea kurdica extracts (IP) (500mg/per kg of body weight) were injected 30 min prior to the plus maze test. The control group (n=7) was not exposed to any noise or exercise, and was kept away from the sources of stress the rats were kept under the same conditions. For the statistical data analysis, one-way ANOVA and LSD tests were used (p&le0.05).

Results: The results showed that in the (noise+training+extract) and (training+extract) groups, the anxiety was less than and the noise group was higher than that of the control group (p<0.01). It seems that aerobic training and extract injections had eliminated the effect of noise stress, and apparently the effect of aerobic training was more significant than that of the extracts.