Acute dietary nitrate supplementation does not attenuate oxidative stress or the hemodynamic response during...

The purpose of this study was to investigate changes in oxidative stress, arterial oxygen saturation (SaO₂), blood pressure (BP), and heart rate (HR) during exercise in hypobaric hypoxia following acute dietary nitrate supplementation. Nine well-trained (maximal oxygen consumption, 60.8 ± 7.8 mL·kg^-1·min^-1) males (age, 29 ± 7 years) visited the laboratory on 3 occasions, each separated by 1 week. Visit 1 included a maximal aerobic cycling test and five 5-min increasing-intensity exercise bouts in a normobaric environment (1600 m). A single dose of either a nitrate-depleted placebo (PL) or a nitrate-rich beverage (NR; 12.8 mmol nitrate) was consumed 2.5 h prior to exercise during visits 2 and 3 (3500 m) in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study consisting of a 5-min cycling warm-up and 4 bouts, each 5 min in duration, separated by 4-min periods of passive rest. Exercise wattages were determined during visit 1 and corresponded to 25%, 40%, 50%, 60%, and 70% of normobaric maximal oxygen consumption. Catalase and 8-isoprostane were measured before and after exercise (immediately before and 1 h postexercise, respectively). NR increased plasma nitrite (1.53 ± 0.83 μmol·L^-1) compared with PL (0.88 ± 0.56 μmol·L^-1) (p < 0.05). In both conditions, postexercise (3500 m) 8-isoprostane (PL, 23.49 ± 3.38 to 60.90 ± 14.95 pg·mL^-1; NR, 23.23 ± 4.12 to 52.11 ± 19.76 pg·mL^-1) and catalase (PL, 63.89 ± 25.69 to 128.15 ± 41.80 mmol·min^-1·mL^-1; NR, 78.89 ± 30.95 to 109.96 ± 35.05 mmol·min^-1·mL^-1) were elevated compared with baseline resting values (p < 0.05). However, both 8-isoprostane and catalase were similar in the 2 groups (PL and NR) (p = 0.217 and p = 0.080, respectively). We concluded that an acute, pre-exercise dose of dietary nitrate yielded no beneficial changes in oxidative stress, SaO₂, BP, or HR in healthy, aerobically fit men exercising at 3500 m.