Optimizing Endurance Athlete Nutrition: Insights from Systems Biology and Wearable Technology

Background:
Endurance athletes need effective nutrition strategies to improve their performance, recovery, and training. Traditional sports nutrition guidelines serve as a basic framework, but differences in individual metabolism highlight the need for specific nutrition plans based on genetics, biology, and environmental factors. This scoping review assesses the use of systems biology in sports nutrition for endurance athletes, emphasizing ‘omics’ studies and wearable technologies.

Methods:
We conducted a scoping review using literature from PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science following the PRISMA-ScR checklist. We developed research questions, search strategies, and eligibility criteria based on the Population-Concept-Context framework. We included original research in English focused on endurance athletes, systems biology approaches, and nutritional interventions or continuous glucose monitoring (CGM).

Results:
Fifty-two studies met our criteria, with distance runners being the most researched group. The studies included eleven on metagenomics, eleven on CGM, ten on nutrigenetics, ten on metabolomics, seven on multi-omics, one on proteomics, one on epigenomics, and one on lipidomics. Over half, 31 studies, were randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with generally high quality.

Conclusions:
Most studies explored biomarkers but provided limited evidence connecting these biomarkers to performance, recovery, and health outcomes for endurance athletes. Further research should include more powerful replicated crossover RCTs, multivariate N-of-1 clinical trials, comprehensive systems-wide approaches, and verification of genetic influences on nutrition to improve dietary guidelines.

Keywords:
continuous glucose monitoring; endurance athletes; metagenomics; multi-omics; nutrigenomics; nutrition; systems biology.