Single and joined behaviour of circulating biomarkers in high-fit and low-fit healthy females

Background: Biomarkers are important in the assessment of health and disease but are poorly studied in healthy individuals. Especially responses of biomarkers in the systemic circulation to longer-term and short-term lifestyle interventions are incompletely understood, neither is their relative response to each other. This study investigated how single biomarkers, functional biomarker categories and total biomarker profiles respond to a difference in longer-term physical activity and recent exercise in healthy individuals. Methods A total of 102 biomarkers were analysed in serum or plasma samples from 30 young, healthy, female adults divided into a high-fit (V̇O 2 peak ≥ 47 mL/kg/min, N = 15) and low-fit (V̇O 2 peak ≤ 37 mL/kg/min, N = 15) group, at baseline and overnight after a single bout of exercise (60 min, 70% V̇O 2 peak). Results Total biomarker profiles were similar between high-fit and low-fit females, with only significantly lower leptin levels in high-fit females (adj.P group = 0.076). Recent exercise significantly affected several single biomarkers related to inflammation and lipid metabolism, and adiponectin (all adj.P exercise < 0.01). Furthermore, functional biomarker categories corresponded to biomarker clusters generated via hierarchical clustering models. Conclusion This study provides insight in the single and joined behaviour of circulating biomarkers in healthy females and identified functional biomarker categories that may be used for characterization of human health physiology. Trial registration: Registered in the Dutch trial register (ref.no. NL7891) on 2019-07-23.