Exercise intensity modulates interorgan communication and is associated with cardiometabolic health outcomes in humans.

Abstract

Exercise is an integral therapy for many cardiometabolic diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and hypertension. Despite its broad health benefits, the circulating factors that mediate exercise adaptations in humans remain incompletely defined, particularly across different exercise intensities. Here, we conducted a multi-cohort human exercise intervention incorporating sprint-interval exercise (SIE) and moderate-intensity exercise (MIE) to analyze intensity-dependent regulation of interorgan crosstalk. We found that exercise intensity distinctly influenced the plasma proteome and metabolome in untrained and trained participants. By integrating multi-organ gene and protein expression datasets with in vitro and in vivo tissue sampling, we mapped regulated proteins to their predicted tissues of origin and destination. Muscle fibers and adipocytes were particularly sensitive to exercise intensity and observed to undergo broad secretory and transcriptomic changes. Moreover, we leveraged a large-scale plasma-phenome database to identify intensity-dependent proteins associated with cardiometabolic health and disease, highlighting how exercise intensity differentially shapes interorgan communication and organismal health.