Swiss Research Institute for Sports Medicine

Background

Allergic diseases such as asthma, atopic dermatitis and allergic rhinitis currently affect more than one billion people worldwide and cause enormous health-care costs, as well as economic loss due to work absences. Professional athletes in particular suffer from impaired performance and have failure to succeed, especially as a result of upper respiratory symptoms. So far, there have not been any studies examining the burden of asthma and allergic diseases in athletes in regard to chronic exercise-induced changes and predisposition to develop respiratory infections.

Specific aims:

The project presented here will be the among the first of a series of studies on exercise immunology, molecular mechanisms of performance and susceptibility to infectious disease in amateur and professional athletes: Our aim is to establish Swiss Research Institute for Sports Medicine (SRISM) as a leading institute for front research in exercise medicine. The initiation of this project in 2020 allowed us to set up of the first Swiss Registry and biobank for athletes, and to perform first analyses on collected blood samples. Our goal is to build on this foundation and grow the registry while performing exciting research, focusing mainly on immune response, inflammation and metabolism on a molecular level. We will focus on three major research aims:

Aim 1. Molecular mechanisms of infection susceptibility linked to exercise and sports

This part of our research will focus on upper respiratory symptoms (being caused by infections, allergic rhinitis, chronic rhinosinusitis and asthma i.a.) – which represent the main reason athletes present to doctor’s offices, apart from injuries.

Aim 2. Molecular mechanisms of sports performance

This part of our research will focus on selected professional performance indexes and questionnaire together with peripheral blood immunological and metabolism biomarkers. We have a technology to determine up to 1500 biomarkers in serum with small amounts of blood and will perform studies before and after intense training. In addition, longitudinal (monthly) analyses and follow-up throughout the whole season in a selected group of professional athletes will be performed.

Aim 3. Immunology and metabolism of asthmatic athletes

Asthma affects approximately 30 % of athletes in Europe and the US, and in-depth characterization of asthmatic athletes represents an important missing link in professional sports. In addition, sports activities of asthmatic children have been encouraged, however it was never approached by using the novel molecular techniques that are available at SIAF. According to preliminary data on asthma and allergic diseases, there are different disease endotypes (distinct functional and pathobiological mechanisms) that call for therapies with specific biologicals. The identification of such endotypes in athletes could optimize individual training programs and improve preventive and/or therapeutic strategies.

In summary, our research specifically aims at:

• Identifying the reasons for the susceptibility to infections & allergies in athletes
• Examining the role of metabolic changes linked to susceptibility of developing upper respiratory diseases
• Identifying molecular targets and the metabolic pathways of infection susceptibility
• Identifying effects of intense exercise on immune response and cellular metabolism
• Demonstration of molecular and metabolic markers of sports performance