Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/21446
Appears in Collections:Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport Journal Articles
Peer Review Status: Refereed
Title: The effect of turmeric (Curcumin) supplementation on cytokine and inflammatory marker responses following 2 hours of endurance cycling
Author(s): Sciberras, Joseph N
Galloway, S D
Fenech, Anthony
Grech, Godfrey
Farrugia, Claude
Duca, Deborah
Mifsud, Janet
Contact Email: sdrg1@stir.ac.uk
Keywords: Immunity
Interleukins
Natural polyphenols
Issue Date: 21-Jan-2015
Date Deposited: 6-Feb-2015
Citation: Sciberras JN, Galloway SD, Fenech A, Grech G, Farrugia C, Duca D & Mifsud J (2015) The effect of turmeric (Curcumin) supplementation on cytokine and inflammatory marker responses following 2 hours of endurance cycling. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 12, Art. No.: 5. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12970-014-0066-3
Abstract: Background: Endurance exercise induces IL-6 production from myocytes that is thought to impair intracellular defence mechanisms. Curcumin inhibits NF-κB and activator protein 1, responsible for cytokine transcription, in cell lines. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of curcumin supplementation on the cytokine and stress responses following 2 h of cycling. Methods: Eleven male recreational athletes (35.5 ± 5.7 years; Wmax275 ± 6 W; 87.2 ± 10.3 kg) consuming a low carbohydrate diet of 2.3 ± 0.2 g/kg/day underwent three double blind trials with curcumin supplementation, placebo supplementation, and no supplementation (control) to observe the response of serum interleukins (IL-6, IL1-RA, IL-10), cortisol, c-reactive protein (CRP), and subjective assessment of training stress. Exercise was set at 95% lactate threshold (54 ± 7% Wmax) to ensure that all athletes completed the trial protocol. Results: The trial protocol elicted a rise in IL-6 and IL1-RA, but not IL-10. The supplementation regimen failed to produce statistically significant results when compared to placebo and control. IL-6 serum concentrations one hour following exercise were (Median (IQR): 2.0 (1.8-3.6) Curcumin; 4.8 (2.1-7.3) Placebo; 3.5 (1.9-7.7) Control). Differences between supplementation and placebo failed to reach statistical significance (p = 0.18) with the median test. Repeated measures ANOVA time-trial interaction was at p = 0.06 between curcumin supplementation and placebo. A positive correlation (p = 0.02) between absolute exercise intensity and 1 h post-exercise for IL-6 concentration was observed. Participants reported “better than usual” scores in the subjective assessment of psychological stress when supplementing with curcumin, indicating that they felt less stressed during training days (p = 0.04) compared to placebo even though there was no difference in RPE during any of the training days or trials. Conclusion: The limitations of the current regimen and trial involved a number of factors including sample size, mode of exercise, intensity of exercise, and dose of curcumin. Nevertheless these results provide insight for future studies with larger samples, and multiple curcumin dosages to investigate if different curcumin regimens can lead to statistically different interleukin levels when compared to a control and placebo.
DOI Link: 10.1186/s12970-014-0066-3
Rights: © 2015 Sciberras et al.; licensee BioMed Central. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Licence URL(s): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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