The Effect of Creatine Supplementation on the CPK Enzyme in Blood Serum and Some Physical Abilities for Wrestlers during the Competition Period.

Abstract

Creatine phosphokinase (CPK) is a binary enzyme that stimulates reverse phosphorylation to regenerate adenosine triphosphate. Creatine supplementation improves the Phosphagen system by increasing the amount of free creatine and phosphocreatine available to replenish adenosine triphosphate. The aims of this study are to investigate the effects of a creatine supplement on CPK enzyme, muscular endurance, power and agility performance compared to a placebo among wrestlers during the competition in a double-blind and randomized manner. Sixteen Wrestlers participated in the current study. They were divided into two groups; Experimental group (EXP) (n = 8) with creatine supplementation and a control group without creatine supplementation (CON) (n = 8). They were tested before (PRE) and after (POST) 8-week creatine supplementation period for CPK enzyme, muscular endurance [i.e. back-throw skill using the wrestling dummy], power [i.e. skill of the bridge], and agility [i.e. skill of the bridge in 10 sec.]. The results have shown statistically significant effects of the time (i.e. pre- to post-training) for all measured variables (p ≤ 0.05) of EXP group (whereas no significant effects (p ˃ 0.05) of CON group. There were statistically significant differences (p ≤ 0.05) at the POST evaluation of EXP group in comparison with CON group for all study variables.