Treadmill exposure was associated with higher terminal measures of gastrointestinal function in male rats receiving D-galactose and loperamide

Exercise may influence bowel function, but direct gastrointestinal functional outcomes in animals treated with D-galactose and loperamide remain insufficiently characterized. We conducted an exploratory endpoint-specific available-case secondary analysis of a broader six-arm experiment. Ten male rats were initially allocated to each source-project group; the present comparison involved blank controls (BC), D-galactose/loperamide-treated model animals (ACF), and model animals exposed to treadmill training (EX). Small-intestinal propulsion, fecal pellet output, and fecal moisture were available for six animals per group, but the retained records did not establish why exactly six had terminal measurements. Compared with ACF, EX showed higher propulsion (64.40 ± 8.52% vs. 44.33 ± 5.31%; difference, 20.07% points; 95% CI, 10.69–29.45), pellet output (10.56 ± 1.77 vs. 1.94 ± 0.39 pellets/6 h; difference, 8.61; 95% CI, 6.76–10.47), and moisture (41.92 ± 4.41% vs. 29.00 ± 4.80%; difference, 12.92% points; 95% CI, 6.98–18.86). Holm-adjusted Welch P values were 0.0021, < 0.001, and 0.0020; exact label-permutation P values were 0.0022 (Holm-adjusted, 0.0065) for each contrast. These findings describe treadmill-exposure-associated terminal differences. Informative endpoint non-availability, differential attrition, survivor bias, and the absence of matched sham treadmill handling, treadmill-environment exposure, and electrical-grid exposure preclude intention-to-treat and exercise-specific causal interpretation.