Abstract 499: Exercise Training Alters the Plasma Lipidomic Profile

Background: Clinical lipid measurements do not represent the full complexity of the effects of exercise on lipid metabolism. Lipidomics allows the assessment of hundreds of lipid species in response to exercise training. Methods: We examined changes in the plasma lipidome after regular exercise in 125 individuals who completed a 20-week endurance exercise program as part of the HERITAGE Family Study. Untargeted lipidomics profiling was performed on baseline and post-training plasma samples by CSH-ESI-QTOF mass spectrometry. Paired t-tests of log-transformed lipid values were used to determine the effects of exercise training. False discovery rate was controlled at 5% using the Benjamini–Hochberg procedure. Results: A total of 255 known lipid species were analyzed. The abundance of 173 lipid species across 11 lipid classes significantly changed with exercise training ( Table 1 ). Most lipid species significantly increased with exercise training, while only specific triacylglycerol species decreased (data not shown). The top overall hit was for PE 36:4 (p=1.4x10 -13 ), which increased 64% with exercise training. Replication of these results was explored in 25 HERITAGE subjects randomly selected for lipid profiling using the C8-positive method as part of an unrelated feasibility project. Data for 52 of the 173 top lipids were available in the 25 subjects. Of these, six lipids (PE 34:2, 36:4, 38:4, 38:6 and LPE 16:0, 38:4), including the top hits for PE and LPE ( Table 1 ), showed nominal (0.0002 < p < 0.04) training responses in the 25 subjects with the same directionality as observed in the larger sample. Discussion: Our study demonstrated extensive alterations in the plasma lipidome in response to regular endurance exercise. Future studies with larger sample sizes, diverse populations, and differing exercise protocols are needed to further examine how the plasma lipidome responds to exercise and potentially contributes to its cardioprotective effects.