Introduction: Statins and exercise training may have synergic beneficial effects on angiogenesis process following myocardial infarction. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the effect of endurance exercise training (EET), atorvastatin and their combination on expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in the cardiac muscle of male rat following experimental myocardial infarction.

Materials & methods: 45 rats (8-10 weeks old, 230 ±10 g body weight) were randomly divided to five groups: Sham, control, EET, atorvastatin, and EET + atorvastatin. Myocardial infarction was induced by subcutaneous injection of isoprenaline (150 mg/kg) in two consecutive days. Drug and training interventions were initiated 2 days after infarction and continued for 4 weeks. In order to assess the expression of VEGF, immunohistochemical staining was used. Data were analyzed by using one-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) and scheffe test at P<0.05 level.

Findings: VEGF expression in the atorvastatin group was significantly less than the control group (P=0.006). Also, VEGF expression in the Combined (EET + atorvastatin) and EET groups was not significant (P=0.534 and P=0.055 respectively), but its expression was significantly higher in the combined group (EET + atorvastatin) compared to the EET group (P=0.002) and atorvastatin group (P=0.001).

Discussion & conclusion: It seems that combination of EET and atorvastatin compared to EET and or atorvastatin alone has a favorable effect on VEGF expression and as a result, on angiogenesis process following myocardial infarction.