Proteomic Response to Acute and Chronic Aerobic Exercise in Healthy Adults

Abstract

Purpose: This study investigated the differential response of the human urinary proteome to acute and chronic exercise perturbation in healthy adults with self-reported habitually highly active and sedentary physical activity levels. Methods: Thirteen healthy adults (men, n=6, age=49.7±9.5; women, n=7, age=52.7±5.8) completed peak cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) before and after a vigorous, 17-session aerobic exercise training (AET) regimen over one month. Pre- and post-exercise morning biospecimen samples of the first and last session were collected, harvested in-solution using hydrogel particles, and analyzed via LC-MS/MS. Data were analyzed for significant changes (p-value and q-value <0.05, respectively) between responses using Perseus bioinformatics tools. Results: Exploratory analysis exhibited a greater number of differential proteins in response to acute and chronic high-intensity continuous aerobic exercise in the active group compared to sedentary. More stringent criteria yielded significant changes in both sedentary (3 proteins) and active group samples (23 proteins) in response to chronic training, but not in response to the first or last acute exercise bout. Conclusion: The current study demonstrated significant differences in response of the urinary proteome between self-reported sedentary and highly active individuals using nanotechnology to enable detection of lower-abundance biomarkers of exercise response in the human urinary proteome.