Acute exercise does not decrease liver fat in men with overweight or NAFLD

Elevated hepatic lipid content (IntraHepatic Lipid, IHL) increases the metabolic complications. Although prolonged exercise training lowers unknown if acute exercise has the same effect. Furthermore, hepatic ATP may be related to insulin resistance and IHL. We aimed to investigate if exercise leads to changes in IHL and whether this is accompanied by hepatic ATP. Twenty-one men (age 54.8 +/- 7.2 years, BMI 29.7 +/- 2.2 performed a 2 h cycling protocol, once while staying fasted and once ingesting glucose. IHL was determined at baseline, 30 min post-exercise post-exercise. Additionally ATP/Total P ratio was measured at baseline post-exercise. Compared with baseline values we did not observe any significant changes in IHL within 30 min post-exercise in neither the the glucose-supplemented condition. However, IHL was elevated 4 h post- compared with baseline in the fasted condition (from 8.3 +/- 1.8 to 8.7 p = 0.010), an effect that was blunted by glucose supplementation (from 1.9 to 8.3 +/- 1.9%, p = 0.789). Acute exercise does not decrease liver overweight middle-aged men. Moreover, IHL increased 4 h post-exercise in fasted condition, an increase that was absent in the glucose- condition. These data suggest that a single bout of exercise may not be lower IHL.