Acute effects of moderate vs. vigorous endurance exercise on urinary metabolites in healthy, young, physically active men-A multi-platform metabolomics approach

Endurance exercise alters whole-body as well as skeletal muscle metabolism and physiology, leading to improvements in performance and health. However, biological mechanisms underlying the body's adaptations to different endurance exercise protocols are not entirely understood. We applied a multi-platform metabolomics approach to identify urinary metabolites and associated metabolic pathways that distinguish the acute metabolic response to two endurance exercise interventions at distinct intensities. In our randomized crossover study, 16 healthy, young, and physically active men performed 30 min of continuous moderate exercise (CME) and continuous vigorous exercise (CVE). Urine was collected during three post-exercise sampling phases (U01/U02/U03: until 45/105/195 min post-exercise), providing detailed temporal information on the response of the urinary metabolome to CME and CVE. Also, fasting spot urine samples were collected pre-exercise (U00) and on the following day (U04). While untargeted two-dimensional gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC×GC-MS) led to the detection of 608 spectral features, 44 metabolites were identified and quantified by targeted nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy or liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). 104 urinary metabolites showed at least one significant difference for selected comparisons of sampling time points within or between exercise trials as well as a relevant median fold change >1.5 or 2.0 or