18/09/2025
🚀 New Publication Alert 🚀
We are excited to share our latest study: “Acute nutritional ketosis during early recovery from aerobic exercise does not affect skeletal muscle transcriptomic response in humans” published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology.
Why does this matter:
Ketone supplements are increasingly marketed as an ergogenic aid for recovery and adaptation, but the underlying molecular effects in muscle remain unclear.
What we did:
We conducted a randomized, double‐blind, crossover trial in recreationally active men. Participants completed 90 min of cycling at ~60% VO₂max followed by 3 hours of recovery. During exercise + recovery, they ingested either a ketone monoester (KME) or placebo. Muscle biopsies & genome‐wide transcriptomics were used to assess responses.
Key findings:
KME raised blood β‐hydroxybutyrate (ketone) levels significantly during recovery.
However, no differences were seen between KME vs placebo in:
🔸Skeletal muscle transcriptome (we measured nearly 17000 genes but no genes were differentially expressed due to KME)
🔸Glycogen resynthesis in muscle
🔸Erythropoietin (EPO) concentrations during early recovery
Implications:
While acute ketone supplementation does produce significant systemic metabolic changes (elevated ketones and reduced glucose), it does not seem to alter early post‐exercise gene expression in muscle under these conditions. It suggests that if ketones affect muscle adaptation, the mechanism is likely downstream of transcription, or requires longer duration/timing, or involves other levels of regulation (e.g. epigenetics, proteomics).
✔️ Thanks to the whole team ( , Jason P. Edwards, , Mark Viggars, , .comocome , ,) for their hard work. Thanks to for the ongoing support.
📄 Read the free full open access paper here:
https://lnkd.in/dv5vAsmn