Abstract
This study examined intra-individual variations in salivary lactate (sLac), alpha-amylase (sAA) and chromogranin A (sCgA) with reference to the accumulation of blood lactate (bLac) during incremental maximal exercise in swimmers. Samples of blood and saliva were collected simultaneously from 12 male professional athletes during an incremental test that consisted of eight series of 100 m in front crawl with increasing velocity (0.03 m s−1 each) and 70-s intervals. The concentration of blood and salivary lactate was determined by an electro-enzymatic assay, whereas sAA and CgA were analysed by Western blotting. Inflection points in the concentration of bLAc, sLac, sAA and CgA were found in all subjects. The accumulation of lactate in saliva followed the same pattern observed in blood with a high correlation between the two (r = 0.91). Similar results were observed between the dynamics of sAA (r = 0.81) and sCgA (r = 0.82) in relation to bLac. These findings support the usefulness of saliva for the determination of the lactate threshold and provide the first demonstration of sCgA as a novel marker of exercise intensity in well-trained men.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to participants and Mr. Gino Degani and Wander Pires for their involvement and understanding towards the instructions given throughout the study. Thanks are also due to the Department of Cardiology of the Federal University of Uberlandia for conducting the tests for aerobic capacity and to the Laboratory of Physical Evaluation and Training (LAFIT-UCB) of the Catholic University of Brasília for providing some of the reagents and equipment for lactate analysis. This study was supported by grants from the funding agency FAPEMIG. The funding agency had no role in designing the study, collecting or analysing data, writing the report or in submitting the manuscript for publication. O.B. and M.D. received graduate fellowships from the international program PEC-PG/CNPq and CNPq, respectively.
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Communicated by David C. Poole.
The authors O. L. Bocanegra and M. M. Diaz contributed equally to this study.
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Bocanegra, O.L., Diaz, M.M., Teixeira, R.R. et al. Determination of the lactate threshold by means of salivary biomarkers: chromogranin A as novel marker of exercise intensity. Eur J Appl Physiol 112, 3195–3203 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-011-2294-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-011-2294-4