Metabolomics of physical exercise: A powerful assessment tool

Abstract

This work aims to determine the metabolic profile of athletes, relating metabolites present in the human body to variables such as age, gender and physical effort to which they were submitted. Chromatographic and spectrometric methods (such as GC-MS and HPLC-MS) are used to separate, identify and quantify metabolites in serum and plasma samples. The obtained data are analyzed using multivariate statistics, using principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares regression for discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). In this way, the metabolites identified in the samples can be correlated with the studied variables, such as age, gender and physical effort. The results show the potential of metabolomics as an important tool to be used in the study of a variety of unknowns that may interfere in athlete’s performance.