Guanidinoacetic Acid With Creatine Compared With Creatine Alone for Tissue Bioenergetics, Hyperhomocysteinemia and Exercise Performance

Energy Metabolism Clinical Trial

Official title:

Guanidinoacetic Acid With Creatine Compared With Creatine Alone for Tissue Bioenergetics, Hyperhomocysteinemia and Exercise Performance: a Randomized Double-blind Superiority Trial

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT03350282
• Other study ID #: SSD-01
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: December 1, 2016
• Est. completion date: May 1, 2018

Study information

• Verified date: May 2018
• Source: University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Sport and Physical Education
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

Co-administration of creatine and guanidinoacetic acid (GAA) has been recently put forward as an advanced dietary strategy to optimize tissue bioenergetics. The investigators hypothesized that creatine-GAA mixture would result in more powerful rise in brain and skeletal muscle creatine, as compared to creatine supplementation alone.

Description:

Targeting energy-demanding tissues in health and disease continues to be a challenging task in human nutrition and biomedicine. Impaired bioenergetics accompanies many different conditions, including cardiometabolic diseases, neurodegenerative disorders or high-intensity exercise, with various dietary interventions developed to restore cellular energy. Creatine is recognized as a beneficial and safe energy-boosting agent in both athletic and clinical environments. However, its effectiveness in specific conditions seems to be fairly restrained due to its limits in transportability and performance. Guanidinoacetic acid (GAA), a metabolic precursor of creatine, appears as a novel energy-enhancing supplement, with GAA being superior to creatine in facilitating creatine concentrations in the human brain and skeletal muscle. This perhaps happens due to GAA interaction with cellular transporters previously dismissed as untargetable carriers by other similar therapeutics. On the other hand, GAA loading remains under scrutiny due to its hyperhomocysteinemia-inducing potential, and possible neurotoxic effects. Co-administration of creatine and GAA has been recently proposed as a better strategy comparing to administration of each compound per se. Besides providing a competitive advantage for enhanced levels of tissue creatine, GAA-creatine mixture might also diminish side effects related to isolated GAA administration. However, no human studies so far evaluated the effects of this mixture. In the present study, the investigators compared the impact of 4-week co-administration of GAA and creatine vs. creatine administration alone on serum biomarkers, exercise performance and tissue bioenergetics in healthy young men.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 14
• Est. completion date: May 1, 2018
• Est. primary completion date: May 1, 2018
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: Male
• Age group: 18 Years to 45 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• men age 18-45 years

• BMI 18.5-24.9 kg/m2

• physically active (> 150 min per week)

• free of known disease

• must be able to give written informed consent

Exclusion Criteria:

• serum homocysteine > 15 µmol/L

• use of dietary supplement (> 1 month)

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Energy Metabolism
• Hyperhomocysteinemia

Intervention

Dietary Supplement:
• GAA-creatine

• Creatine

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
n/a

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Sport and Physical Education

References & Publications (1)

Ostojic SM. Co-administration of creatine and guanidinoacetic acid for augmented tissue bioenergetics: A novel approach? Biomed Pharmacother. 2017 Jul;91:238-240. doi: 10.1016/j.biopha.2017.04.075. Epub 2017 Apr 28. — View Citation

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Brain creatine	Rise in brain creatine levels	Baseline vs 4-week follow up
Secondary	Vastus medialis creatine	Rise in vastus medialis creatine creatine levels	Baseline vs 4-week follow up