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Diabetes mellitus is one of the most common serious metabolic diseases that results in hyperglycemia due to defects of insulin secretion or insulin action or both. The present review focuses on the alterations to the diabetic neuronal tissues and skeletal muscle, including stem cells in both tissues, and the preventive effects of physical activity on diabetes. Diabetes is associated with various nervous disorders, such as cognitive deficits, depression, and Alzheimer’s disease, and that may be caused by neural stem cell dysfunction. Additionally, diabetes induces skeletal muscle atrophy, the impairment of energy metabolism, and muscle weakness. Similar to neural stem cells, the proliferation and differentiation are attenuated in skeletal muscle stem cells, termed satellite cells. However, physical activity is very useful for preventing the diabetic alteration to the neuronal tissues and skeletal muscle. Physical activity improves neurogenic capacity of neural stem cells and the proliferative and differentiative abilities of satellite cells. The present review proposes physical activity as a useful measure for the patients in diabetes to improve the physiological functions and to maintain their quality of life. It further discusses the use of stem cell-based approaches in the context of diabetes treatment.

Adult stem cells play an essential role in mammalian organ maintenance and repair throughout adulthood since they ensure that organs retain their ability to regenerate. The choice of cell fate by adult stem cells for cellular proliferation, self-renewal, and differentiation into multiple lineages is critically important for the homeostasis and biological function of individual organs. Responses of stem cells to stress, injury, or environmental change are precisely regulated by intercellular and intracellular signaling networks, and these molecular events cooperatively define the ability of stem cell throughout life. Skeletal muscle tissue represents an abundant, accessible, and replenishable source of adult stem cells. Skeletal muscle contains myogenic satellite cells and muscle-derived stem cells that retain multipotent differentiation abilities. These stem cell populations have the capacity for long-term proliferation and high self-renewal. The molecular mechanisms associated with deficits in skeletal muscle and stem cell function have been extensively studied. Muscle-derived stem cells are an obvious, readily available cell resource that offers promise for cell-based therapy and various applications in the field of tissue engineering. This review describes the strategies commonly used to identify and functionally characterize adult stem cells, focusing especially on satellite cells, and discusses their potential applications.