WELLINGTON, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Different forms of exercise have different effects on bone development, according to a New Zealand study that could lead to new exercise regimes for children to keep them healthy in later life.
Researchers at the University of Auckland's Liggins Institute compared young rats doing mild exercise, where one group ran on a wheel and the other did a weightlifting exercise when they stood on their hind legs to get food.
The rats doing the running exercise had bones that were thicker, but also more porous than those doing the weightlifting exercise.
The two exercises were also found to turn a group of the genes controlling bone development on or off in exactly opposite ways.
The findings could be important for understanding of how children's bones responded to different kinds of exercise, and what the consequences might be later in life, molecular biologist Dr Justin O'Sullivan said in a statement Thursday.
Co-author Professor Elwyn C. Firth said it was important to understand the way bone development responded to exercise at the molecular level in order to say exactly how it improved bone health.
"It's a bit early to say precisely why bones develop differently depending on the type of exercise, but the subtle changes we saw in the bones of the running rats are consistent with what we see in adult human runners," Firth said in the statement.
"We're now looking more closely at exactly what happens with different forms of exercise, and whether changes are retained into adulthood. What we learn may be useful for the prevention and treatment of bone loss later in life."
