Introduction: None-glucose substrates such as ketone bodies and lactate play an important role in sustaining the brain energy need in diabetes and obesity states. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of endurance training on lactate transports gene expression in the brain of healthy and diabetic rats.
 Materials & methods: Thirty five eight-weeks-old male Wistar rats were randomly divided into four groups control (n=7), trained (n=8), diabetic control (n=10), and trained diabetic (n=10). Diabetes was induced by the intraperitonealinjection of streptozotocin, and 8weeks ofendurance training was applied on trained groups. Relative gene expression of MCT1, MCT2 and MCT4 expression in the cortex, hippocampus, and cerebellumwere measured by Real-time PCR,and gene expression was quantifiedby 2-∆∆CT method. The differences of variables between groups were tested using Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey’s post-hoc testwere used to determine wherever significant differences occurred.
 Findings: Diabetes induction increased MCT1 gene expression in the cortex (1.91-fold) and MCT2 in the cortex (1.98 - fold), hippocampus (1.7-fold), and cerebellum (2.52 - fold) in the diabetic control as compared to the control group. There was a significant difference regarding MCT1 gene expression between the diabetic control and the trained diabetic (P<0.05). MCT2 gene expression in the cortex (P<0.05) and cerebellum (P<0.05) were significantly different between the diabetic control and the trained diabetic.
Discussion & conclusion: The results of this study showedthat diabetes and exercise-induced changes in the lactate transporters gene expression were occurred in order to protection of the brain lactate uptake.