Effects of Different Exercise Modes on the Urinary Metabolic Fingerprint of Men with and without Metabolic Syndrome

Abstract

Exercise is important in the prevention and treatment of the metabolic syndrome (MetS), a cluster of risk factors that raises morbidity. Metabolomics can facilitate the optimization of exercise prescription. This study aimed to investigate whether the response of the human urinary metabolic fingerprint to exercise depends on the presence of MetS or exercise mode. Twenty-three sedentary men (MetS, n = 9, and Healthy, n = 14) completed four trials: resting, high-intensity interval exercise (HIIE), continuous moderate-intensity exercise (CME), and resistance exercise (RE). Urine samples were collected pre-exercise and at 2, 4, and 24 h for targeted analysis by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Time exerted the strongest differentiating effect, followed by exercise mode and health status. The greatest changes were observed in the first post-exercise samples, with a gradual return to baseline at 24 h. RE caused the greatest responses overall, followed by HIIE, while CME had minimal effect. The metabolic fingerprints of the two groups were separated at 2 h, after HIIE and RE; and at 4 h, after HIIE, with evidence of blunted response to exercise in MetS. Our findings show diverse responses of the urinary metabolic fingerprint to different exercise modes in men with and without metabolic syndrome.

An NMR-Based Approach to Identify Urinary Metabolites Associated with Acute Physical Exercise and Cardiorespiratory Fitness in Healthy Humans—Results of the KarMeN Study

“…Thus, pyruvate is either directly released into the blood or previously converted to lactate via lactate dehydrogenase reaction [46] or to alanine via transamination [45], thereby providing substrates for gluconeogenesis in the liver [45,47]. Our results demonstrated a median 1.74-fold increase in the urinary alanine excretion due to exercise, which is in line with previous work [21,26,27,29]. As the alanine flux into the bloodstream during exercise was shown to be higher than the alanine uptake by the liver [48], it can be assumed that this amino acid accumulated in blood and was therefore excreted via urine after the incremental test.…”

“…As the end-product of anaerobic glucose breakdown, lactate is released into the blood stream and partly excreted via urine [45]. The documented increase in urinary lactate elimination is in accordance with the results of other exercise metabolomics studies [21,22,[25][26][27]29], even though the magnitude of urinary lactate excretion was generally greater in response to maximal exercise protocols [22,27,29]. When compared with other metabolites, we observed a remarkably high inter-individual variation in the post-exercise urinary lactate concentrations.…”

“…With regard to metabolites of the TCA cycle (i.e., citrate, cis-aconitate and succinate), a median 1.24-to 1.30-fold increase in their urinary levels was observed post-exercise. A significant rise in urinary succinate has previously been documented in response to a 30 s maximal sprint [21], whereas a decrease in both urinary succinate [26,27] and citrate [22,26,27,29] was reported after intermittent [22,27,29] or submaximal exercise [26,29]. Compared to this, other studies showed that acute exercise was followed by an increase in plasma TCA cycle intermediates, suggesting that these compounds spilled over from muscle into the circulation due to an increased TCA cycle flux [58,59].…”

“…Although the rise in urinary alanine was consistent across several exercise-related metabolomics studies, this global increase in amino acids has not been detected in previous work. While Siopi et al could confirm a higher urinary excretion of glycine, histidine, taurine, tyrosine, and threonine 2 h after high-intensity interval and continuous moderate exercise [29], other studies documented an unchanged urinary excretion of taurine [22,27], isoleucine, leucine, and valine [22] or a decreased level in urinary glycine [22,26,27], leucine [25], histidine [22], threonine [25], and tyrosine [27], respectively, in response to the different exercise protocols. With respect to the increase in urinary taurine, a semi-essential amino acid highly concentrated in human muscles [52], it can be supposed that the acute exercise resulted in an increased muscular taurine release.…”

“…Until now, several studies have examined both the acute [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] and chronic [30][31][32][33][34][35] effects of exercise on the human metabolome by using metabolomics. Although blood represents the most widely used biofluid in metabolomics research [15], recent publications have demonstrated the ability of urine as a non-invasive biological material to reflect acute exercise-induced perturbations in metabolism, e.g., after short-term exercise at maximal intensities [21,22,27] or submaximal endurance exercise [26,29]. However, to the best of our knowledge, no previous study has investigated to what extent the urinary metabolome responds to a standard exercise tolerance test, during which individuals perform a stepwise progressive exercise program until exhaustion.…”