Obesity is a well-established risk factor to health for its relationship with insulin resistance, diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Myocyte-adipocyte crosstalk model plays a significant role in studying the interaction of muscle and adipose development. Previous related studies mainly focus on the effects of adipocytes on the myocytes activity, however, the influence of myotubes on the preadipocytes development remains unclear. The present study was carried out to settle this issue. Firstly, the co-culture experiment showed that the proliferation, cell cycle, and differentiation of 3T3-L1 preadipocytes were arrested, and the apoptosis was induced, by differentiated C2C12 myotubes. Next, the sensitivity of 3T3-L1 preadipocytes to glucocorticoids (GCs), which was well known as cell proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis factor, was decreased after co-cultured with C2C12 myotubes. What's more, our results showed that C2C12 myotubes suppressed the mRNA and protein expression of glucocorticoid receptor (GR) in 3T3-L1 preadipocytes, indicating the potential mechanism of GCs sensitivity reduction. Taken together, we conclude that C2C12 myotubes inhibited 3T3-L1 preadipocytes proliferation and differentiation by reducing the expression of GR. These data suggest that decreasing GR by administration of myokines may be a promising therapy for treating patients with obesity or diabetes. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.