Blood Biomarker Profiling and Monitoring for High-Performance Physiology and Nutrition: Current Perspectives, Limitations and Recommendations

Abstract

Blood test data were traditionally confined to the clinic for diagnostic purposes, but are now becoming more routinely used in many professional and elite high-performance settings as a physiological profiling and monitoring tool. A wealth of information based on robust research evidence can be gleaned from blood tests, including: the identification of iron, vitamin or energy deficiency; the identification of oxidative stress and inflammation; and the status of red blood cell populations. Serial blood test data can be used to monitor athletes and make inferences about the efficacy of training interventions, nutritional strategies or indeed the capacity to tolerate training load. Via a profiling and monitoring approach, blood biomarker measurement combined with contextual data has the potential to help athletes avoid injury and illness via adjustments to diet, training load and recovery strategies. Since wide inter-individual variability exists in many biomarkers, clinical populationbased reference data can be of limited value in athletes, and statistical methods for longitudinal data are required to identify meaningful changes within an athlete. Data quality is often compromised by poor pre-analytic controls in sport settings. The biotechnology industry is rapidly evolving, providing new technologies and methods, some of which may be well suited to athlete applications in the future. This review provides current perspectives, limitations and recommendations for sports science and sports medicine practitioners using blood profiling and monitoring for nutrition and performance purposes.

Screening of Potential Stress Biomarkers in Sweat Associated with Sports Training

“…precocious detection of diseases, treatments) [ 2 , 3 ]. Also, in high competition sports, it is important to maximize athletes’ performance and avoid undesired secondary effects such as muscle injury and chronic inflammation (related with immunological responses) [ 4 , 5 ]. There are multiple ways of detecting biomarkers in the human body, such as the analysis of the different physical parameters and by the biochemical analysis of body fluids like urine, saliva, sweat, and blood.…”

“…Research is still needed to demonstrate the benefit from the wide potential of sweat as clinical sample [ 18 ]. As so, the current study proposes to develop an analytical methodology to identify the profile of potential human stress biomarkers linked to the effect of sports training, aiming for the protection of athlete’s health and/or contributing to optimal sports performance through injury prevention [ 4 ], diagnosis or treatment [ 2 , 3 ].…”

Autoregulation in Resistance Training: Addressing the Inconsistencies

“…Most developments in the autoregulation of training have occurred in sporting contexts where a culture of data collection is widespread, and practitioners routinely seek innovative methods to optimise performance [ 23 ]. Additionally, more novel measurement technologies are frequently emerging in sporting contexts, enabling practitioners to individually tailor training regimes using, for example, variables such as heart rate variability [ 24 ], blood and salivary biomarkers [ 25 , 26 ], as well as perceptual measures of well-being and stress [ 27 ]. Whilst these measures are gaining increasing recognition as athlete monitoring tools [ 22 ], it is still relatively unclear how they relate to an individual’s performance and whether they can be used to effectively adjust training.…”

Reliability and suitability of physiological exercise response and recovery markers

“…Besides, regarding a comprehensive and serious assessment of athletes’ load state, the use of combinations of suitable parameters including functional testing, subjective testing and biochemical analyses should be considered 15 , 16 . In this regard, suitability is defined by a certain exercise sensitivity and correlation to muscle force parameters, such as maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) 17 . Some studies proved the suitability of muscle force and subjective parameters such as the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) or the multidimensional mood state as subjective tools for physical performance assessments 18 – 20 .…”