Tecklenburg honored for exercise-induced asthma research poster
Sandy Tecklenburg, an exercise physiology doctoral student in the Department of Kinesiology, received an award for the best research poster in the doctoral student category at them most recent Midwest American College of Sports Medicine conference.
Sandy Tecklenburg
Tecklenburg's poster describes research that found ascorbic acid (vitamin C) supplementation reduces the severity of exercise-induced asthma. Her poster and the research abstract have been accepted at the ACSM annual conference this summer and the abstract will be published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
Tecklenburg, a Cincinnati native, received her master's degree from Indiana University and her bachelor's degree in biochemistry, with a minor in physical education, from the College of Wooster in Ohio. She is particularly interested in EIA and nutritional supplementation because of the role both can play in athletics.
Tecklenburg won a 2003 grant from Gatorade to fund the research, which involved eight asthmatics who also had EIA. For two weeks, they ingested either ascorbic acid or placebos. They had a one-week washout period before crossing over to the other diet. In EIA, vigorous exercise triggers an acute narrowing of the airway afterward, making breathing difficult. Tecklenburg's research found that the post exercise lung function, as measured by the forced expiratory volume in 1 second, decreased by an average 6.4 percent for study participants receiving the ascorbic acid supplementation, compared to decreases of 14.3 percent and 12.9 percent for participants on a normal diet or receiving a placebo respectively. In addition, several proinflammatory mediators were also significantly reduced on the ascorbic acid diet. Her research also found that the reduction in the severity of EIA may occur through a mechanism by which ascorbic acid supplementation reduces reactive oxygen species, thereby leading to a reduction in bronchoconstrictive mediators, which are chemical messengers that trigger airway narrowing.
Co-investigators are Timothy Mickleborough, assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology; Joel Stager, professor in the Department of Kinesiology; Alyce Fly, associate professor in the Department of Applied Health Science; and Yeon Bai, a graduate student in the Department of Applied Health Science.
