BASELINE LABORATORY PARAMETER MODIFICATIONS ARE ASSOCIATED TO THE TRAINING RATE IN AMATEUR AND ELITE ATHLETES

Objective: The goal was to observe the physiological adaptation to different levels of physical activity vs sedentary subjects. Design: We have evaluated the effect of different training rate on the modification of the basal levels of hormonal, biochemical and haematological parameters in elite and amateur men and women performing sport activity as well as on sedentary controls. Partecipants: One hundred fifty-three subjects were enrolled in this study and divided In three categories according to the level of weekly sport training and activity. Blood Samples were obtained in rest condition for all the subjects. Results: Data obtained show that some haematochemical and endocrine parameters seems to be persistently modified and that exercise-induced changes depend on gender and on the rate of training. In particular, modification of leukocyte population percentages and reduction of glucose levels characterises both woman and men athletes. An increase of creatinkinase (CK),due to skeletal muscle hypertrophy was observed in highly trained men and women. In the group of amateur women, the CK increase was accompanied by an increase in aspartate-amino-transferase (AST) and alanine-amino-transferase (ALT). Gender and training rate specific endocrine adaptation (increase of thyroid-stimulating-hormone, estradiol and testosterone for men and decrease of cortisol and free-thyroxine for woman) profile was also identified. Conclusion: All together these data strongly suggest that the screening of blood parameters in athletes may be useful to establish a baseline to monitor the physiological/metabolic challenge arising from training