Scientists at Touro University Nevada have found that small blood particles, known as extracellular vesicles (EVs), play a key role in transporting certain hormones throughout the body. Physical exercise can enhance this process.
Key Players in Hormone Transport and Exercise Effects
The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides new insights into hormone circulation and brain access, and how exercise may influence energy balance, mental health, immune function, and drug distribution.
Blood and other bodily fluids are full of extracellular vesicles (EVs)—tiny particles that exist outside cells. EVs communicate signals between cells locally and across organs by delivering biological cargo like proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids, while also helping remove cellular waste.
While researchers have long recognized EVs’ roles in processes such as immune responses and cancer progression, their interactions with hormones remain much less understood.
Exercise Boosts POMC Transport via Extracellular Vesicles
The researchers examined a hormone precursor called proopiomelanocortin (POMC), which gives rise to hormones such as endorphins—linked to the “runner’s high”—and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), which regulates the body’s stress response. Since exercise influences these hormones, the team triggered changes with physical activity to study how POMC interacts with extracellular vesicles (EVs).
They discovered that vigorous exercise increases the amount of POMC carried by EVs by fourfold.
“This study goes beyond demonstrating an ‘exercise effect’; it uncovers a new biological mechanism in which exercise-induced stress temporarily turns EVs into hormone transport shuttles in the bloodstream,” says Mark Santos, Ph.D., assistant professor at Touro and the study’s first author.
EV-Carried POMC Efficiently Reaches the Brain
The study also showed that in laboratory tests, POMC carried by EVs crosses human blood vessel barriers—including the blood-brain barrier—more effectively than POMC on its own.
Because POMC must be converted into “mature” hormones to trigger effects in the brain, which is notoriously difficult to access, further research is needed to determine how the exercise-induced increase in POMC impacts brain function.
“The finding that EVs can transport POMC opens many potential avenues,” says Aurelio Lorico, MD, Ph.D., professor of pathology at Touro and co-senior author of the study alongside Cheryl Hightower. “It could have broad implications for pain management, metabolism and obesity, inflammation, and the stress response.”
Read the original article on: Phys.Org
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