Beyond the Reference Range: Hematological and Biochemical Insights into Athletic Performance

Routine hematological and biochemical biomarkers play a central role in monitoring athletes'health, but their value goes far beyond basic health screening. Recent advances in sportsmedicine show that these markers also carry important information about physiologicaladaptation, recovery status, training load, nutritional status, and overall athletic performance.Interpreting these findings in athletes is far from straightforward. Intense training producesadaptations, such as changes in blood volume, iron metabolism, and inflammatory markers, thatcan resemble abnormal findings in the general population. A result flagged as a concern in asedentary person may simply reflect a well-trained athlete's normal physiology. Withoutsport-specific reference values and a clear understanding of these overlaps, clinicians and sportsscientists risk both over-diagnosis and missed pathology, including overtraining syndrome,sports anemia, or early signs of illness.Despite growing interest in biomarker-guided training and precision approaches to athletemonitoring, the field still lacks a unified, evidence-based framework connecting laboratoryfindings to real-world decisions about training, recovery, and clinical management. ThisResearch Topic responds to that gap by bringing together current research on the physiological,clinical, and practical dimensions of hematological and biochemical monitoring in sport.Goal / ScopeThis Research Topic invites original research, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and expertopinions that advance our understanding of hematological and biochemical alterations in athletesand their practical implications. We welcome contributions addressing, but not limited to:• Hematological adaptations to acute and chronic exercise• Biochemical biomarkers associated with training load, recovery, and performance• Iron metabolism and sports anemia• Inflammatory and immune biomarkers in athletes• Hormonal and metabolic adaptations to training• Biomarkers of muscle damage and overtraining• Sport-specific reference intervals for laboratory values• Clinical interpretation of laboratory findings in elite athletes• Precision medicine and biomarker-guided performance optimizationBy consolidating this evidence in one collection, we aim to give researchers and clinicians insports medicine, exercise physiology, and performance science a practical reference fordistinguishing healthy physiological adaptation from clinically relevant abnormalities, and forusing biomarker data to guide training and recovery decisions. Topic editors: Stefano Palermi, Francesca Graziano, Marco Vecchiato, Giuseppe Di Gioia Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84391/beyond-the-reference-range-hematological-and-biochemical-insights-into-athletic-performance