Long-term physical exercise facilitates putative glymphatic and meningeal lymphatic vessel flow in humans

Roh-Eul Yoo, Jun-Hee Kim, Hyo Youl Moon, Jae Yeon Park, Seongmin Cheon, Hyun-Suk Shin, Dohyun Han, Yukyoum Kim (), Sung-Hong Park () and Seung Hong Choi ()
Additional contact information
Roh-Eul Yoo: Seoul National University College of Medicine
Jun-Hee Kim: Seoul National University
Hyo Youl Moon: Seoul National University
Jae Yeon Park: Seoul National University
Seongmin Cheon: Chonnam National University
Hyun-Suk Shin: Seoul National University Hospital
Dohyun Han: Seoul National University Hospital
Yukyoum Kim: Seoul National University
Sung-Hong Park: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Seung Hong Choi: Seoul National University College of Medicine

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Regular voluntary exercise has been shown to increase waste transport through the glymphatic system in mice. Here, we investigate the impact of physical exercise on both upstream and downstream brain waste clearance in healthy volunteers via noninvasive MR imaging. Putative glymphatic influx, evaluated using intravenous contrast-enhanced dynamic T1 mapping, increases significantly at the putamen after 12 weeks of long-term exercise using a cycle ergometer. The putative meningeal lymphatic vessel size and flow, measured by intravenous contrast-enhanced black-blood imaging and IR-ALADDIN technique, increase significantly after long-term exercise. Plasma proteomics reveals significant changes in inflammation-related and immune-related proteins (down-regulated: S100A8, S100A9, PSMA3, and DEFA1A3; up-regulated: J chain) after long-term exercise, which correlate with putative glymphatic influx or mLV flow. Our results suggest that increased glymphatic and mLV flow may be the potential mechanism underlying the neuroprotective effects of exercise on cognition, highlighting the importance of long-term, regular exercise.

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58726-1 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-58726-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-58726-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().