Treadmill

Exercise, Motor Function & Coordination (+ VO2 max)

Advanced Solutions for Rodents Exercise Studies

The Treadmill is an advanced computerized equipment tailored for forced exercise experiments and fatigue assessments in rodents. It supports individual or group animal studies, accommodating up to six mice or four rats per treadmill. The system features adjustable inclination for workload modification.
A servo motor drives the treadmill belt, allowing you to program custom speed profiles with varying acceleration and deceleration phases. Infrared sensors detect when animals leave the belt, while optional motivational stimuli like foot shock or air puff encourage them to stay on track.
Our Treadmill offers precise control over exercise parameters, facilitating studies on chronic adaptation to exercise and disease progression reversal in rodents with unparalleled efficiency and flexibility.

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Advantages in Comparison to Competitive Systems

4 Different Experiment Modes: training, single, training + single, training + single deactivated

Various Stimulus options: shock, air-puff, or manual pusher

Adjustable Inclination: -20, -10 & up to +25 degrees

Constant and Accelerating Speed

Initial Speed 0.07 – 2.0 m/sec, accelerating time 0-600 sec

Individual Timer per Line

Loading and storage of individual Animal Profiles: up to 200 animals per table

Key Performance Parameters for Animal Treadmill Experiments

Time and distance traveled: total or during time intervals

Manual delivery of electric stimulus (in some experiment modes)

Tracking of speed when the animal falls off the running surface.

Assessment of animal performance in watts (activated when a value larger than 0 is entered in the Angle of Gradient field)

Recording of the phase number in which the light barrier interruption occurred

Calculation of time from the start of the phase up to the light barrier interruption

Metabolic Treadmill for Mice and Rats

A Metabolic Treadmill for small laboratory animals is a fully computerized, electronically controlled system for exercise calorimetry or investigating the effectiveness of drugs or impaired motor coordination of the skeletal muscles. Available for mice and rats, it has one compartment, air-tight cover, and perforated lid for training purposes. The system comes as a stand-alone unit, which is connected to a respirometry system – a module of PhenoMaster.

On-demand, the floor grid can be equipped to apply an electric stimulus.

The system runs according to a user-defined exercise protocol created with the help of user-friendly software. It allows a seamless integration of Stellar telemetry for various physiological data recordings at freely moving animals.

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Publications

Fernández, J., Fernández-Sanjurjo, M., Iglesias-Gutiérrez, E., Martínez-Camblor, P., Villar, C. J., Tomás-Zapico, C., Fernández-García, B., & Lombó, F. (2021). Resistance and Endurance Exercise Training Induce Differential Changes in Gut Microbiota Composition in Murine Models. Frontiers in Physiology, 12.

Klein, A. B., Nicolaisen, T. S., Ørtenblad, N., Gejl, K. D., Jensen, R., Fritzen, A. M., Larsen, E. L., Karstoft, K., Poulsen, H. E., Morville, T., Sahl, R. E., Helge, J. W., Lund, J., Falk, S., Lyngbæk, M., Ellingsgaard, H., Pedersen, B. K., Lu, W., Finan, B., … Clemmensen, C. (2021). Pharmacological but not physiological GDF15 suppresses feeding and the motivation to exercise. Nature Communications, 12(1), Article 1.

Milenkovic, D., Misic, J., Hevler, J. F., Molinié, T., Chung, I., Atanassov, I., Li, X., Filograna, R., Mesaros, A., Mourier, A., Heck, A. J. R., Hirst, J., & Larsson, N.-G. (2023). Preserved respiratory chain capacity and physiology in mice with profoundly reduced levels of mitochondrial respirasomes. Cell Metabolism, 35(10), 1799-1813.e7.

Møller, L. L. V., Raun, S. H., Fritzen, A. M., & Sylow, L. (2022). Measurement of skeletal muscle glucose uptake in mice in response to acute treadmill running. Journal of Biological Methods, 9(3), e162.

Reynolds, J. C., Lai, R. W., Woodhead, J. S. T., Joly, J. H., Mitchell, C. J., Cameron-Smith, D., Lu, R., Cohen, P., Graham, N. A., Benayoun, B. A., Merry, T. L., & Lee, C. (2021). MOTS-c is an exercise-induced mitochondrial-encoded regulator of age-dependent physical decline and muscle homeostasis. Nature Communications, 12(1), Article 1.

Brynnel, A., Hernandez, Y., Kiss, B., Lindqvist, J., Adler, M., Kolb, J., van der Pijl, R., Gohlke, J., Strom, J., Smith, J., Ottenheijm, C., & Granzier, H. L. (2018). Downsizing the molecular spring of the giant protein titin reveals that skeletal muscle titin determines passive stiffness and drives longitudinal hypertrophy. eLife, 7, e40532.

de Wendt, C., Espelage, L., Eickelschulte, S., Springer, C., Toska, L., Scheel, A., Bedou, A. D., Benninghoff, T., Cames, S., Stermann, T., Chadt, A., & Al-Hasani, H. (2021). Contraction-Mediated Glucose Transport in Skeletal Muscle Is Regulated by a Framework of AMPK, TBC1D1/4, and Rac1. Diabetes, 70(12), 2796–2809

Hingst, J. R., Kjøbsted, R., Birk, J. B., Jørgensen, N. O., Larsen, M. R., Kido, K., Larsen, J. K., Kjeldsen, S. A. S., Fentz, J., Frøsig, C., Holm, S., Fritzen, A. M., Dohlmann, T. L., Larsen, S., Foretz, M., Viollet, B., Schjerling, P., Overby, P., Halling, J. F., … Wojtaszewski, J. F. P. (2020). Inducible deletion of skeletal muscle AMPKα reveals that AMPK is required for nucleotide balance but dispensable for muscle glucose uptake and fat oxidation during exercise. Molecular Metabolism, 40, 101028.

Kim, H. J., Kim, Y. J., Kim, Y. J., Baek, J. H., Kim, H. S., Kim, I. Y., & Seong, J. K. (2023). Microbiota influences host exercise capacity via modulation of skeletal muscle glucose metabolism in mice. Experimental & Molecular Medicine, 55(8), Article 8.

Slater, R. E., Strom, J. G., Methawasin, M., Liss, M., Gotthardt, M., Sweitzer, N., & Granzier, H. L. (2018). Metformin improves diastolic function in an HFpEF-like mouse model by increasing titin compliance. Journal of General Physiology, 151(1), 42–52.