Exercise training is a powerful means to combat metabolic diseases. Mice are extensively used to investigate the benefits of exercise, but mild cold stress induced by ambient housing temperatures may confound translation to humans. Thermoneutral housing is a strategy to make mice more metabolically similar to humans but its effects on exercise adaptations are unknown. Here we show that thermoneutral housing blunts exercise-induced improvements in insulin action in muscle and adipose tissue and reduces the effects of training on energy expenditure, body composition, and muscle and adipose tissue protein expressions. Thus, many reported effects of exercise training in mice are likely secondary to metabolic stress of ambient housing temperature, making it challenging to translate to humans. We conclude that adaptations to exercise training in mice critically depend upon housing temperature. Our findings underscore housing temperature as a critical parameter in the design and interpretation of murine exercise training studies.

运动训练是对抗代谢性疾病的有力手段。小鼠被广泛用于研究运动的益处，但是由周围环境温度引起的轻微的冷应激可能会使向人的翻译混淆。热中性住房是一种使小鼠在代谢上与人类更相似的策略，但其对运动适应的影响尚不清楚。在这里，我们显示，热中性住房会钝化运动诱导的肌肉和脂肪组织中胰岛素作用的改善，并减少训练对能量消耗，身体成分以及肌肉和脂肪组织蛋白质表达的影响。因此，许多报道的运动训练对小鼠的影响很可能是环境温度的代谢压力所致，因此很难转化为人类。我们得出的结论是，对小鼠进行运动训练的适应性关键取决于外壳温度。我们的发现强调了住房温度是鼠运动训练研究设计和解释中的关键参数。