Kynurenine concentration of serum was increased by exercise

Kynurenine pathway of tryptophan makes a lot of physiological active substances, such as quinolinate, NAD and so on, suggesting that kynurenine itself may play a very important role physiologically. Therefore, we examined the influence of exercise on serum kynurenine concentration. At first, we assayed kynurenine concentration of students (n = 13) who took part in a rugby camp for three days. The mean value of kynurenine concentration of before and after training were 1.362 +/- 0.306 microM and 1.725 +/- 0.511 microM respectively. These data means that severe exercise rise the serum kynurenine concentration. Then we tried to examine the relationship between the level of exercise and serum kynurenine concentration. Serum kynurenine concentration had significantly increased immediately after the exercise from 1.869 +/- 0.285 microM to 2.138 +/- 0.248 microM of 24 hours later by loading of 65% heart rate max exercise for each subject. These results suggested that at least the severe exercise affect on the tryptophan metabolism. We will discuss the change of serum kynurenine concentration by another sports such as soccer game and 20 km run.