Investigation of the Antifatigue Effects of Korean Ginseng on Professional Athletes by Gas Chromatography-Time-of-Flight-Mass Spectrometry-Based Metabolomics

J AOAC Int. 2018 May 1;101(3):701-707. doi: 10.5740/jaoacint.17-0220. Epub 2017 Sep 19.

Abstract

Ginseng is usually used for alleviating fatigue. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the regulatory effect of Korean ginseng on the metabolic pattern in professional athletes, and, further, to explore the underlying mechanism of the antifatigue effect of Korean ginseng. GC-time-of-flight-MS was used to profile serum samples from professional athletes before training and after 15 and 30 day training, and professional athletes administered with Korean ginseng in the meanwhile. Biochemical parameters of all athletes were also analyzed. For the athlete control group, strength-endurance training resulted in an elevation of creatine kinase (CK) and blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and a reduction in blood hemoglobin, and a dynamic trajectory of the metabolomic profile which were related to fatigue. Korean ginseng treatment not only lead to a marked reduction in CK and blood urea nitrogen (BUN) in serum, but also showed regulatory effects on the serum metabolic profile and restored scores plots close to normal, suggesting that the change in metabolic profiling could reflect the antifatigue effect of Korean ginseng. Furthermore, perturbed levels of 11 endogenous metabolites were regulated by Korean ginseng significantly, which might be primarily involved in lipid metabolism, energy balance, and chemical signaling. These findings suggest that metabolomics is a potential tool for the evaluation of the antifatigue effect of Korean ginseng and for the elucidation of its pharmacological mechanism.

MeSH terms

  • 3-Hydroxybutyric Acid / metabolism
  • Adult
  • Athletes*
  • Blood Urea Nitrogen
  • Creatine Kinase / metabolism
  • Dicarboxylic Acids / metabolism
  • Exercise*
  • Fatigue / prevention & control*
  • Fatty Acids, Monounsaturated / metabolism
  • Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry
  • Glycine / analogs & derivatives
  • Glycine / metabolism
  • Glyoxylates / metabolism
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Metabolomics*
  • Panax / metabolism*
  • Plant Preparations / therapeutic use*
  • Principal Component Analysis
  • Ribose / metabolism
  • Sports
  • Young Adult

Substances

  • Dicarboxylic Acids
  • Fatty Acids, Monounsaturated
  • Glyoxylates
  • Plant Preparations
  • palmitoleic acid
  • suberylglycine
  • Ribose
  • Creatine Kinase
  • glyoxylic acid
  • Glycine
  • 3-Hydroxybutyric Acid