Immune response and amino acids blood concentration during ultramarathon: A sportomics approach

Abstract

Background: Sportomics is non-hypothesis-driven holistic top-down research on individual metabolic changes during sports and exercise. Ultramarathon is a prolonged exercise and an important challenge for the Central Nervous System (CNS), making it an interesting protocol to study central and peripheral fatigue. Objective: Here we evaluated the immune response and amino acids metabolism during an ultramarathon in an elite world-class male athlete. Methods: The athlete ran for 8 hours (86 km). Venous blood samples were collected (fasting, before race, hourly, recovery -60 min and 720 min) and~75 cellular and biochemical parameters were measured. Major nitrogen compounds were corrected by creatinine concentration and evaluated using Pearson correlation. Results: Leucocytes presence increase in blood was mostly due a neutrophil response to exercise (250%). We also observed a lymphocytes reduction. The exercise raise of both leukocytes and neutrophils were cooperative and fitted in sigmoid function with high correlation (r = 0.97). On the other hand their presence in blood declined during recovery following an exponential decay. We were not able to find an equation to fit the lymphocytes presence behavior. Ammonia increased more than 300%, almost due amino acid deamination (mainly Leu; Ile; Phe and Trp). A raise of both urea (200%) and urate (30%) was also measured. Conclusion:The results may show an important metabolic adaptation during ultramarathon and demonstrate the kinetics of amino acids consumption as energetic molecules during exercise in a world-class athlete. The findings bring new information about the amino acids availability to the CNS during prolonged exercise.