Original articles  BIOCHEMISTRY 

The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness 2002 December;42(3):472-80

Copyright © 2009 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Serum amino acid responses to three different exercise sessions in male power athletes

Pitkänen H. ¹, Mero A. ¹, Oja S. S. ^{2, 3}, Komi P. V. ¹, Pöntinen P. J. ², Saransaari P. ², Takala T. ¹

¹ Department of Biology of Physical Activity University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland 2 University of Tampere Medical School, Tampere, Finland 3 Department of Clinical Physiology Tampere University Hospital, Tampere, Finland

Background. The pur­pose of ­this ­study was to inves­ti­gate ser­um ami­no ­acid respons­es to 3 dif­fer­ent exer­cise ses­sions in ­male pow­er ath­letes (sprint­ers and jump­ers; n=11).
Methods. All sub­jects per­formed 2 run­ning exer­cise ses­sions: a ­short run ses­sion (SRS) of 3×4×60 m ­with recov­er­ies of 120 and 360 sec, and a ­long run ses­sion (LRS) of 20 sec ­runs ­with recov­er­ies of 100 sec ­until exhaus­tion. Ten sub­jects per­formed a ­strength exer­cise ses­sion (SES) of 90 min. Serum ami­no ­acids (n=21) ­were ­assayed 10 min ­before and 10 min ­after the ses­sions. Peak ­blood lac­tate was ana­lyzed ­from fin­ger­tip ­blood sam­ples tak­en 1 and 5 min ­after the ses­sions.
Results. The ­before-­after com­par­i­sons ­showed ­that the essen­tial ami­no ­acids (EAAs) ­decreased by 8.7% (p<0.01) and ala­nine ­increased by 26.7% (p<0.001) ­after SRS. Following LRS the EAAs ­decreased ­also by 8.7% (p<0.01) and ala­nine ­increased by 25.3% (p<0.001). In the sum of all ami­no ­acids ­there ­were no chang­es ­after SRS and LRS but a sig­nif­i­cant ­decrease (14.8%; p<0.01) was ­observed ­after SES. Also the EAAs ­decreased (20.6%; p<0.001) but ala­nine, tau­rine and citrul­line ­were the ­only sin­gle ami­no ­acids ­with no chang­es ­after SES. The ­peak ­blood lac­tate con­cen­tra­tions ­after SRS, LRS and SES ­were 13.8±1.9, 16.4±1.3 and 2.5±0.4 ­mmol/L, respec­tive­ly. The lac­tate val­ue ­after SES dif­fered (p<0.001) ­from the val­ues ­observed ­after SRS and LRS. The com­par­i­son of the chang­es in the ser­um ami­no ­acid con­cen­tra­tions fol­low­ing the 3 exer­cise ses­sions ­revealed ­that SRS and LRS ­were ­very sim­i­lar but SES dif­fered ­from SRS and LRS strong­ly (p<0.01) in the sum of all ami­no ­acids.
Conclusions. The cur­rent ­data indi­cate ­that the sum con­cen­tra­tions of all ami­no ­acids in ser­um ­decrease ­after the ­strength exer­cise ses­sion but not ­after the lac­tic anaer­o­bic run­ning exer­cis­es.