Physical exercise-associated gene expression signatures in peripheral blood.

Objective: To assess response to physical stress, gene expression profiles in peripheral blood cells were analyzed using an original microarray carrying 1467 stress-responsive complementary DNA probes.

Design: Gene expression was analyzed at 4, 24, and 48 hours after exercising on a cycle ergometer at 60% VO2 max for 1 hour (aerobic exercise) or until exhausted (exhaustive exercise).

Setting: Institute of Health Biosciences, University of Tokushima Graduate School.

Participants: Twelve healthy male students of the postgraduate or undergraduate school.

Interventions: The volunteers performed the aerobic or exhaustive exercise on a cycle ergometer.

Main Outcome Measurements: Detection of aerobic exercise-responsive or exhaustive exercise-responsive genes in peripheral blood cells.

Results: Aerobic and exhaustive exercise transiently changed the expression of 21 and 16 genes, respectively, with the peak at 4 hours. Only 2 genes significantly responded to both types of exercise. Exhaustive but not aerobic exercise produced a secondary response with significantly altered expression of 14 genes at 24 hours. Five of those genes encode receptors for neurotransmitters (HTR1A, CHRNB2, GABRB3, GABRG3, and LOC51289).

Conclusions: The behavior of the individual genes shown here may be informative to objectively assess acute physical stress and exhaustion-associated responses.