Abstract
Recent efforts to establish a role for plasma matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) as a marker of exercise-induced muscle damage have been inconsistent. Methodological and experimental design issues have contributed to confusion in this area. The purpose of this study was to use a damaging eccentric arm task to evaluate the relationship between activity-induced muscle damage and plasma MMP-9 levels in humans while controlling for physical activity history and quantifying day-to-day variability of the dependent variables. Fourteen physically inactive males performed 6 sets of 10 eccentric contractions of the elbow flexors at 120% of their voluntary concentric maximum. Soreness ratings, maximum voluntary isometric strength, range of motion (ROM), limb circumference, and plasma creatine kinase (CK) and MMP-9 levels were measured at 2 time points before, immediately after, and 1, 2, 4, and 7 days post-exercise. Changes in traditional markers of muscle damage mirrored patterns previously reported in the literature, but plasma MMP-9 concentration and activity measured by ELISA and gelatin zymography were unchanged at all time points examined. Plasma levels of the MMP-9 inhibitor, tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-1 (TIMP-1), were also unchanged post-exercise. Finally, although mean MMP-9 levels were not significantly different between the two pre-exercise timepoints, the high total error of measurement and low day-to-day correlation suggest substantial within and between subject variability. Plasma MMP-9 levels are not a robust or reliable marker for eccentric exercise-induced damage of the elbow flexor musculature, though this may not preclude a role for MMPs in skeletal muscle remodeling in response to injury.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Zachary T. Leonard and Nicole T. Bannister for their contributions to this study. We would also like to thank the staff at the CU-Boulder Clinical Translational Research Center for their technical assistance with this study. This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health Grant K01 AR050505-01, in addition to the Clinical Translational Research Center Grant (CTRC NCRR/NIH 1UL1RR025780), the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program and the Bioscience Undergraduate Research Skills and Training Program at CU-Boulder, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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Communicated by Martin Flueck.
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421_2010_1806_MOESM1_ESM.tif
Supplementary Figure 1. Variation in post-exercise plasma Creatine Kinase (CK) levels. Lines represent the individual changes in plasma CK activity. The group mean values are represented by the shaded bars. CK activity was highly variable, but significantly increased 15-fold from Baseline to 4 days post-exercise. (TIFF 19772 kb)
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Madden, M.C., Byrnes, W.C., Lebin, J.A. et al. Plasma matrix metalloproteinase-9 response to eccentric exercise of the elbow flexors. Eur J Appl Physiol 111, 1795–1805 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-010-1806-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-010-1806-y