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prolonged stress can significantly affect animal condition and can affect the experimental
variables. Furthermore, a significant body of work shows that the range of animal exer-
cise protocols (training type, intensity, time, duration, species, and sizes) has presented a
diverse set of findings [ 1 , 3 , 18 , 24 , 25 , 39 – 41 ]. Considering that acute exercise intensity
is a major factor influencing the cardiovascular function (regarding low-, moderate-, and
high-intensity) [ 41 ], understanding the changes induced by a singular bout of exercise
may provide novel insights on how to approach the effects of chronic increases on car-
diovascular function [ 42 ]. Investigators can also lower stress response activation by max-
imizing the animal’s perceived behavioral control of the exercise situation. In the next
section, we will focus on reviewing for aerobic exercise applied in animal cardiovascular
researches.
3.2 Aerobic Cardiac Exercise Models
Aerobic exercise models for studying cardiovascular function (arrhythmia, cardiac
hypertrophy, coronary artery disease, hypertension, myocardial infarction,) include
treadmill running [ 1 , 24 , 31 , 43 – 47 ], wheel running and rotating tract running [ 1 , 3 ,
48 ], and swimming [ 3 , 21 , 37 , 40 , 49 ] (as presented in Fig. 4.1 adapted from
Fig. 4.1 Aerobic animal exercise models (Adapted from published review [ 11 ]). (a) Treadmill
running. (b) Elastic wheel running. (c) Rotating tract running. (d) Swimming
4 Acute and Chronic Exercise in Animal Models