Metabolic flexibility associated with flight time among combat pilots of the Brazilian air force

Introduction

Fighter pilots must support the effects of many stressors, including physical and psychological exertion, circadian disturbance, jet lag, and environmental stress. Despite the rigorous selection of military pilots, those factors predispose to failures in physiological compensatory mechanisms and metabolic flexibility.

Objectives

We compared through NMR-based metabolomics the metabolic profile of Brazilian F5 fighter pilots with different flight experiences vs. the control group of non-pilots. We hypothesized that combat pilots have metabolic flexibility associated with combat flight time.

Methods

We evaluated for the first time 34 Brazilian fighter pilots from Santa Cruz Air Base (Rio de Janeiro, RJ) allocated into three groups: pilots with lower total accumulated flight experience < 1,100 h (PC1, n = 7); pilots with higher total accumulated flight experience ≥ 1,100 h (PC2, n = 6); military non-pilots (CONT, n = 21). Data collection included anthropometric measurements, total blood count, lipidogram, markers of oxidative stress, and serum NMR-based metabolomics.

Results

In comparison with controls (p < 0.05), pilots exhibited decreased levels of white blood cells (−13%), neutrophils (−15%), lymphocytes (−20%), alfa-glucose (−13%), lactate (−26%), glutamine (−11%), histidine (−20%), and tyrosine (−11%), but higher isobutyrate (+ 10%) concentrations. Significant correlations were found between lactate vs. amino acids in CONT (r = 0.55–0.68, p < 0.001), and vs. glutamine in PC2 (r = 0.94, p = 0.01).

Conclusion

Fighter pilots with lower experience showed a dysregulation in immune-metabolic function in comparison with controls, which seemed to be counteracted by the accumulation of flight hours. Those findings might have implications for the health preservation and operational training of fighter pilots.