The effects of short-term selenium supplementation on the serum hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and glutathione (GSH) in inactive male students after an exhaustive acute Aerobic protocol

Intense exercise damages tissues and disturbs some cellular processes through oxidative stress and antioxidants can modulate intense exercise-induced oxidative stress. The aim of the current study is to examine the effect of short-term selenium on serum hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and Glutathione (GSH) supplementation of inactive male university students, following a session of acute exhaustive aerobic training.

The present study is a semi-experimental study with a cross-sectional design, which was conducted at the laboratory of the University of Birjand in the year 1397. 10 inactive male university students at the average age of 18.60 ± 0.84 and BMI of 21.38 ± 3.61 ml/kg/min were randomly selected for this research. The 10-member group attended four stages, called control, training, supplementation, and training + supplementation group, in a cross-sectional way. The training protocol which has been used in the test was Bruce Protocol. After attending one training session, the subjects took selenium supplementation in the form of capsules (200 mg daily) for 14 days. Immediately after the training, the blood samples were taken from arm vessels and was analyzed. For the determination of the normal distribution of data, the Shapiro-Wilk test has been employed. Then an analysis of variance repeated measure test and dependent t-test were used for extraction of results at the significant level of p<0.05.

The results showed that following acute exhaustive aerobic training, H2O2 serum levels have increased significantly (p=0.01) and then significantly decreased (p=0.001) by taking selenium supplementation for 14 days (p=0.001); however, after training and selenium supplementation, GSH serum levels did not show any significant changes (p=0.27).

Since taking selenium supplementation for 14 days could significantly decrease the high H2O2 levels, following a session of acute exhaustive aerobic training, it seems that this supplementation can have a positive effect on the oxidative stress, caused by acute training.