Background and Aims:

C-reactive protein (CRP) is a marker of inflammation and growing evidence suggests that CRP might play an additive role to predict future cardiovascular events in subjects with or without established cardiovascular disease (CVD) or type 2 diabetes. Moreover, regular exercise is well known to offer protection against all-cause mortality, primarily by protection against CVD and type 2 diabetes mellitus as well as lowering impact on CRP levels. Of note, the impact of an acute exercise on CRP concentrations has not been evaluated yet.

Methods and Materials:

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of an acute aerobic exercise on CRP levels in relation to a meal taken before the exercise session. Sixty minutes of exercise was performed at 60% of the subject's peak oxygen uptake (VO_2peak) on 3 different occasions, in a random order: 1) 2 hours following a standardized breakfast high in sucrose (HSB) (G: 59%; F: 27%; P: 14%; 452 kcal), 2) high in fat (HFB) (G: 26%; F: 60%; P: 14%; 461 kcal) and, 3) in the fasted state (FS). Ten sedentary diabetic men (mean of age; 55 +/- 13 years, weight; 92.0 +/- 16.5 kg, height; 175 +/- 7 cm and BMI; 29.8 +/- 5.3 kg/m²) performed all 3-exercise sessions. None of the subjects used insulin, and 5 subjects were treated with oral hypoglycemic agents and 5 only with the diet. Blood samples were obtained at rest, after the exercise (60 min), and during the recovery period (90 min). Peak oxygen uptake (VO_2peak) was evaluated with a incremental protocol executed on a cycle ergometer, following a warm-up of 1 minute at 15 watts and 2 minutes at 30 watts, the workload was thereafter increased at 15 watts/min until exhaustion.

Results:

An increment in plasma CRP was observed at 60 min (P = .007) and returned to the baseline values into the recovery period (P = .3 at 90 min) in the HSB situation. Plasma CRP levels raised following 60 min of aerobic exercise during the HFB situation and remain higher in the recovery period (P = .03 at 90 min) compared to the baseline. However, exercise had no significant impact on plasma CRP levels in the FS situation.

Conclusions:

Acute exercise may have various inflammatory impact dependent of the energetic composition of the meal taken before exercise. High sucrose meal might raise CRP levels for a shorter time than high a fat meal. Moreover, exercise performed in the fasted state had no effect on plasma CRP levels.

Section Description

For more information, contact Marilyn Thomas (204) 488-5854