MedTrace Logo

Unravelling Energy Issues Underpinning Low Energy Availability in High Performance Athletes

NCT07026175 · Status: RECRUITING · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 20

Last updated 2025-06-18

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

The goal of this clinical trial is to understand how the body responds to short-term, severe low energy availability (LEA) in healthy, weight-bearing endurance athletes aged 18-45 years old. LEA describes a mismatch between an individual's dietary energy intake and the energy cost of their commitments for training and competition. The main questions this trial aims to answer are:

1. What effect does short-term, severe LEA have on sleeping metabolic rate?
2. What effect does short-term, severe LEA have on other body systems identified within the Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) Health and Performance Conceptual models?

Researchers will compare a control trial with both a LEA trial achieved through diet restriction and a LEA trial achieved through increased exercise to see if there are differences in the body's response.

Participants will complete three 6-day trials, a minimum of 3-weeks apart, involving:

* Prescribed diet (all food provided)
* Prescribed running and/or cycling exercise
* Two visits to ACU Fitzroy campus for blood tests and exercise testing
* 50 hour stay (two nights and two days) in the ACU metabolic chamber

Conditions

  • Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport

Interventions

OTHER

Diet-induced low energy availability

6-days of severe low energy availability (LEA, 15kcal/kg FFM/d), achieved by superimposing restricted energy intake on the control trial.

OTHER

Exercise-induced low energy availability

6-days of severe low energy availability (LEA, 15kcal/kg FFM/d), achieved by superimposing increased exercise energy expenditure on the control trial.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance

    collaborator UNKNOWN

  • Australian Catholic University

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Louise M Burke, PhD · Australian Catholic University

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
NONE
Model
CROSSOVER

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
45 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2025-06-30
Primary Completion
2027-06-30
Completion
2027-06-30

Countries

  • Australia

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT07026175 on ClinicalTrials.gov