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Salivary alpha amylase not chromogranin A reflects sympathetic activity: exercise responses in elite male wheelchair athletes with or without cervical spinal cord injury

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posted on 2017-01-06, 11:33 authored by Christof LeichtChristof Leicht, Thomas A.W. Paulson, Vicky Goosey-TolfreyVicky Goosey-Tolfrey, Nicolette BishopNicolette Bishop
Background: Salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) and chromogranin A (sCgA) have both been suggested as non-invasive markers for sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity. A complete cervical spinal cord injury leading to tetraplegia is accompanied with sympathetic dysfunction; the aim of this study was to establish the exercise response of these markers in this in vivo model. Methods: Twenty-six elite male wheelchair athletes (C6-C7 tetraplegia: N=8, T6-L1 paraplegia: N=10 and non spinal cord injured controls: N=8) performed treadmill exercise to exhaustion. Saliva and blood samples were taken pre, post, and 30 min post exercise and analysed for sAA, sCgA and plasma adrenaline concentration, respectively. Results: In all three subgroups, sAA and sCgA were elevated post exercise (P<0.05). Whilst sCgA was not different between subgroups, a group x time interaction for sAA explained the reduced post exercise sAA activity in tetraplegia (162±127 vs 313±99 (paraplegia) and 328±131 U∙mL-1 (controls), P=0.005). The post exercise increase in adrenaline was not apparent in tetraplegia (P=0.74). A significant correlation was found between adrenaline and sAA (r=0.60, P=0.01), but not between adrenaline and sCgA (r=0.06, P=0.79). Conclusions: The blunted post-exercise rise in sAA and adrenaline in tetraplegia implies that both reflect SNS activity to some degree. It is questionable whether sCgA should be used as a marker for SNS activity, both due to the exercise response which is not different between the subgroups and its non-significant relationship with adrenaline.

Funding

This work was funded by the Peter Harrison Centre for Disability Sport.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Sports Medicine - Open

Citation

LEICHT, C.A., 2017. Salivary alpha amylase not chromogranin A reflects sympathetic activity: exercise responses in elite male wheelchair athletes with or without cervical spinal cord injury. Sports Medicine, 3, article 1, DOI: 10.1186/s40798-016-0068-6

Publisher

Springer © The Authors

Version

  • NA (Not Applicable or Unknown)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2016-12-07

Publication date

2017

Notes

This is an Open Access article it is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

ISSN

0112-1642

eISSN

1179-2035

Language

  • en