Abstract
Running a marathon causes strenuous joint loading and increased energy expenditure. Adipokines regulate energy metabolism, but recent studies have indicated that they also exert a role in cartilage degradation in arthritis. Our aim was to investigate the effects of running a marathon on the levels of adipokines and indices of cartilage metabolism. Blood samples were obtained from 46 male marathoners before and after a marathon run. We measured levels of matrix metalloproteinase-3 (MMP-3), cartilage oligomeric protein (COMP) and chitinase 3-like protein 1 (YKL-40) as biomarkers of cartilage turnover and/or damage and plasma concentrations of adipokines adiponectin, leptin and resistin. Mean marathon time was 3∶30∶46±0∶02∶46 (h:min:sec). The exertion more than doubled MMP-3 levels and this change correlated negatively with the marathon time (r = –0.448, p = 0.002). YKL-40 levels increased by 56% and the effect on COMP release was variable. Running a marathon increased the levels of resistin and adiponectin, while leptin levels remained unchanged. The marathon-induced changes in resistin levels were positively associated with the changes in MMP-3 (r = 0.382, p = 0.009) and YKL-40 (r = 0.588, p<0.001) and the pre-marathon resistin levels correlated positively with the marathon induced change in YKL-40 (r = 0.386, p = 0.008). The present results show the impact of running a marathon, and possible load frequency, on cartilage metabolism: the faster the marathon was run, the greater was the increase in MMP-3 levels. Further, the results introduce pro-inflammatory adipocytokine resistin as a novel factor, which enhances during marathon race and associates with markers of cartilage degradation.
Highlights
Moderate recreational activity is an effective mean to improve health showing many long-term benefits: improved lung and heart function, muscle strength and metabolic health among other things
The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of marathon running on the levels of adipokines adiponectin, leptin and resistin, as well as on markers associated with cartilage degradation in inflammatory arthritis and osteoarthritis; i.e. cartilage oligomeric protein (COMP), matrix metalloproteinase-3 (MMP-3) and YKL-40, in an attempt to further understand the effects of running associated strenuous loading on articular cartilage
We found that pre-marathon adipokine levels were associated with the changes detected in biomarkers reflecting cartilage turnover and/or damage – a high pre-marathon resistin level was associated with a larger increase in the YKL-40 level, while low adiponectin and high leptin levels were related to a greater increase in the COMP concentration
Summary
Moderate recreational activity is an effective mean to improve health showing many long-term benefits: improved lung and heart function, muscle strength and metabolic health among other things. Running has beneficial effects on knee articular cartilage, but elite athletes who perform their activities with high impacts and exert high stresses on their joints appear to have increased risk to develop osteoarthritis and the concomitant presence of joint injury further increases this risk [3]. The effects of joint loading caused by exercise were investigated in the recent MRI study by Mosher et al [4]. Those authors found that there was measurable compression of cartilage after 30 min of running. There are reports on the effects of joint loading and exercise on the release of biomarkers of cartilage turnover and/or damage focusing mainly on COMP but little is known about more recent biomarkers MMP-3 and YKL-40 which are known to associate with cartilage degradation in inflammatory arthritis and/or osteoarthritis [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]
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