Lipidomic profiles, lipid trajectories and clinical biomarkers in female elite endurance athletes

We assessed whether blood lipid metabolites and their changes associate with various cardiometabolic, endocrine, bone- and energy-related comorbidities of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) in female elite endurance athletes. Thirty-eight Scandinavian female elite athletes underwent a day-long exercise test. Five blood samples were obtained during the day - at fasting state and before and after two standardized exercise tests. Clinical biomarkers were assessed at fasting state, while untargeted lipidomics was undertaken using all blood samples. Linear and logistic regression was used to assess associations between lipidomic features and clinical biomarkers. Overrepresentations of findings with P < 0.05 from these association tests were assessed using Fisher’s exact tests. Self-organizing maps and a trajectory clustering algorithm were utilized to identify informative clusters in the population. Twenty associations P(FDR) < 0.05 were detected between lipidomic features and clinical biomarkers. Notably, cortisol demonstrated an overrepresentation of associations with P < 0.05 compared to other traits (P(Fisher) = 1.9×10(−14)). Mean lipid trajectories were created for 201 named features for the cohort and subsequently by stratifying participants by their energy availability and menstrual dysfunction status. This exploratory analysis of lipid trajectories indicates that participants with menstrual dysfunction might have decreased adaptive response to exercise interventions.