Abstract

Immune suppression has been suggested to occur as a result of acute exercise. Most studies have investigated immediate effects after bouts of exercise mainly after lower body exercise (running/cycling), and the time course of recovery has rarely been determined. We chose two groups of athletes for our studies. One group represented subjects of a range of fitness level from recreational to high-performance runners. The 2nd group represented kayakists of a similar range of fitness levels. Following interval training designed to stress either the lower or upper body anaerobically, we have now shown that upper body exercise (kayaking) induces similar in vitro responses to those described for lower body exercise. There were no differences between reponses of low-fitness versus high-fitness subjects. In addition we have studied the in vitro responses of leukocytes following acute anaerobic exercise over a 24-h recovery period. The results showed that the reduced lymphocyte proliferative response, in vitro, to the T-cell mitogen CONA experienced immediately after exercise returned to normal levels within 2 h of recovery. This suggests that the reduction in lymphocyte proliferative response is a short transient one. The addition of interleukin-2 (IL-2) or indomethacin to the mitogen-stimulated cultures of preexercise and postexercise cells demonstrated that postexercise suppression in 3H-DNA synthesis of leukocytes could not be accounted for by inability of T-cells to produce IL-2 nor by inhibitory action of prostaglandin production. Verf.-R.