Molecular Protein Interactions and Predictive Pathways as Biomarkers for Enhancing Volleyball Performance: A...

Understanding molecular protein interactions offers promising long-term health benefits for volleyball players by serving as biomarkers that enable predictions of metabolic status, inflammation, injury risk, and recovery potential.

This review aims to clarify the molecular protein interactions that serve as useful biomarkers to enhance volleyball performance.

For that end, a non-systematic review of the existing literature was conducted across multiple databases, including PubMed/Medline, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar. This review addressed the key molecular pathways as biomarkers that are affected during volleyball performance, such as BDNF, IGF-1, AMPK, PGC-1α, IL-6, and mTORC1, as well as the involvement of small non-coding RNAs, including miR-22, miR-17, miR-125b, miR-24, miR-26a, miR-93, miR-223, miR-320a, and miR-486.

From the literature, we observed that a single 60-minute volleyball session elevates growth hormone levels and reduces IL-6, thereby supporting an anabolic state in volleyball players. Moreover, even 2 weeks of volleyball training increases BDNF and IGF-1 expression, partly driven by increases in specific miRNAs, such as miR-223, miR-320a, and miR-486. Notably, the magnitude of BDNF elevation varies across populations, reflecting genetic polymorphisms in the BDNF gene.

While measuring these molecular markers provides valuable theoretical insight into training adaptations and stress resilience in volleyball athletes, the extreme heterogeneity of current study protocols and the lack of standardized reference values for these biomarkers make it too early to use them as biomarkers for performance improvement and training adaptation. Consequently, these biomarkers currently serve as basic candidates for future research and require extensive validation before they can be reliably used for real-time, personalized training monitoring in volleyball.