The association between lactate and muscle aerobic substrate oxidation: Is lactate an early marker for metabolic disease in healthy subjects?

Fasting plasma lactate concentrations are elevated in individuals with metabolic disease. The aim of this study was to determine if the variance in fasting lactate concentrations were associated with factors linked with cardiometabolic health even in a young, lean cohort. Young (age 22 ± 0.5; N = 30) lean (BMI (22.4 ± 0.4 kg/m2) women were assessed for waist-to-hip ratio, aerobic capacity (VO2peak), skeletal muscle oxidative capacity (near infrared spectroscopy; fat oxidation from muscle biopsies), and fasting glucose and insulin (HOMA-IR). Subjects had a mean fasting lactate of 0.9 ± 0.1 mmol/L. The rate of deoxygenation of hemoglobin/myoglobin (R2 = .23, p = .03) in resting muscle and skeletal muscle homogenate fatty acid oxidation (R2 = .72, p = .004) were inversely associated with fasting lactate. Likewise, cardiorespiratory fitness (time to exhaustion during the VO2peak test) was inversely associated with lactate (R2 = .20, p = .05). Lactate concentration was inversely correlated with HDL:LDL (R2 = .57, p = .02) and positively correlated with the waist to hip ratio (R2 = .52, p = .02). Plasma lactate was associated with various indices of cardiometabolic health. Thus, early determination of fasting lactate concentration could become a common biomarker used for identifying individuals at early risk for metabolic diseases.