Competitive season effects on polyunsaturated fatty acid content in erythrocyte membranes of female football players

ABSTRACT

Background

An optimal and correctly balanced metabolic status is essential to improve sports performance in athletes. Recent advances in omic tools, such as the lipid profile of the mature erythrocyte membranes (LPMEM), allow to have a comprehensive vision of the nutritional and metabolic status of these individuals to provide personalized recommendations for nutrients, specifically, the essential omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, individuating deficiencies/unbalances that can arise from both habitual diet and sportive activity. This work aimed to study the LPMEM in professional female football players during the football season for the first time and compare it with those defined as optimal values for the general population and a control group.

Methods

An observational study was carried out on female football players from the Athletic Club (Bilbao) playing in the first division of the Spanish league. Blood samples were collected at three points: at the beginning, mid-season, and end of the season for three consecutive seasons (2019–2020, 2020–2021, and 2021–2022), providing a total of 160 samples from 40 women. The LPMEM analysis was obtained by GC-FID by published method and correlated to other individual data, such as blood biochemical parameters, body composition, and age.

Results

We observed a significant increase in docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) (p 0.048) and total polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) (p 0.021) in the first season. In the second season, we observed a buildup in the membrane arachidonic acid (AA) (p < .001) and PUFA (p < .001) contents when high training accumulated. In comparison with the benchmark of average population values, 69% of the football players showed lower levels of omega-6 dihomo-γ-linolenic acid (DGLA), whereas 88%, 44%, and 81% of the participants showed increased values of AA, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and the ratio of saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids (SFA/MUFA), respectively. Regarding relationships between blood biochemical parameters, body composition, and age with LPMEM, we observed some mild negative correlations, such as AA and SFA/MUFA ratio with vitamin D levels (coefficient = -0.34 p = .0019 and coefficient = -.25 p = .042); DGLA with urea and cortisol (coefficient = -0.27 p < .006 and coefficient = .28 p < .0028) and AA with age (coefficient = -0.33 p < .001).

Conclusion

In conclusion, relevant variations in several fatty acids of the membrane fatty acid profile of elite female football players were observed during the competitive season and, in comparison with the general population, increased PUFA contents were confirmed, as reported in other sportive activities, together with the new aspect of DGLA diminution, an omega-6 involved in immune and anti-inflammatory responses. Our results highlight membrane lipidomics as a tool to ascertain the molecular profile of elite female football players with a potential application for future personalized nutritional strategies (diet and supplementation) to address unbalances created during the competitive season.

KEYWORDS:

• Membrane lipidome
• mature red blood cell
• female athletes
• inflammation
• exercise
• football

Acknowledgments

N.P. thanks the Department of Economic Development and Infrastructures of the Basque Government for receiving a PhD grant for young researchers in the scientific–technological and business environment of the Basque agricultural and food sector. We would like to express our gratitude to the female football players from Athletic Club that participated in this study.

Disclosure statement

C.F. is a cofounder of Lipinutragen srl, a spin-off of the CNR dedicated to membrane lipidomic analysis in human health. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the rest of the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15502783.2023.2245386

Author contribution

Conceptualization: I.T., J.A., T.V., J.Le.; methodology: J.A., A.L., J.La., J.Le., N.P., J.A., C.F.; formal analysis: N.P., J.A., G.M., C.F.; data curation: N.P., J.A., G.M.; writing – original draft preparation, N.P. and I.T.; writing – review and editing, N.P., I.T., J.A., J.M.O., C.F.; supervision, and funding acquisition: I.T. All authors read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki, updated at the World Medical Assembly in Fortaleza in 2013, and approved by the Euskadi Clinical Research Ethics Committee (permission number TUE-ATH-2018-02). Written informed consent was obtained from all athletes.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by the Department of Environment: Territorial Planning: Agriculture and Fisheries of the Basque Country Government, ELKARTEK program from the Basque Country Government and the Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI) of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the grant agreement: TECNOMIFOOD project (CER-20191010). This is contribution number 1177 of AZTI, Food Research, Basque Research and Technology Alliance (BRTA).