Abstract
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is known to improve performance and skeletal muscle energy metabolism. However, whether the body’s adaptation to an exhausting short-term HIIT is reflected in the resting human metabolome has not been examined so far. Therefore, a randomized controlled intervention study was performed to investigate the effect of a ten-day HIIT on the resting urinary metabolome of young active men. Fasting spot urine was collected before (−1 day) and after (+1 day; +4 days) the training intervention and 65 urinary metabolites were identified by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Metabolite concentrations were normalized to urinary creatinine and subjected to univariate statistical analysis. One day after HIIT, no overall change in resting urinary metabolome, except a significant difference with decreasing means in urinary hypoxanthine concentration, was documented in the experimental group. As hypoxanthine is related to purine degradation, lower resting urinary hypoxanthine levels may indicate a training-induced adaptation in purine nucleotide metabolism.
Highlights
Over the past decade, research interest in High-intensity interval training (HIIT) as a time-efficient method for inducing health benefits has greatly increased [1]
There is already strong evidence that higher exercise intensities lead to a stronger expression of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator (PGC)-1α [4,5], which is regarded as a major regulator of mitochondrial biogenesis in human skeletal muscle [6]
There were no significant differences between the experimental group (EG) and the control group (CG) with regard to age, anthropometric parameters and physical fitness at baseline
Summary
Research interest in HIIT as a time-efficient method for inducing health benefits has greatly increased [1]. A growing body of evidence supports the potential of HIIT to cause similar or even superior improvements in skeletal muscle energy metabolism and cardiometabolic health as compared to moderate-intensity continuous exercise [2,3]. In order to allow physicians and sports scientists to recommend more specific exercise programs or training strategies, it is crucial to know more about the cellular mechanisms and metabolic alterations underlying the whole-body and skeletal muscle adaptation to HIIT. Given the positive effects that seem to be associated with an increase in muscle PGC-1α (e.g., an increase in skeletal muscle oxidative capacity or a greater reliance on fat oxidation [7]) the elevated activity of PGC-1α following HIIT underpins the potential of HIIT to stimulate long-term metabolic changes that promote widespread health benefits [2,8].
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