New IRBM contribution to Metabolites

As part of a special issue on exercise metabonomics, IRBM recently published a paper in Metabolites exploring the limits and advantages of using saliva to observe metabolic responses to physical exercise.

Saliva offers a number of advantages over traditional blood sampling. For example, it is non-invasive and does not require skilled healthcare professionals for collection. However, saliva also has disadvantages in that the effects of physical exercise may last for shorter periods of time, and the analysis may reflect both metabolites from the body as well as those from bacteria living in the oral cavity.

In our study, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) was used to analyze the saliva samples of seventeen soccer players after their participation in a soccer match for signs of metabolic changes. Our work focuses on the effect of time sampling on results, the type of normalization required to cope with changes in water content, and the metabolic response that can be observed using saliva.

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