In-vitro quantification of glycogen using a novel non-invasive electromagnetic sensor

Muscle glycogen stores have a significant impact on endurance athlete's sporting performance. Ensuring optimal levels in line with the volume and intensity of exercise is essential. Carbohydrate manipulation is a well thought out and rigorous component of any athlete's regime and ensures elite levels of performance and the correct training adaptations can be obtained. Glycogen from oyster mixed into a water solution was used to manipulate concentrations observed in healthy human subjects ranging from 0–400mmol/L. The electromagnetic sensor used in this study swept frequencies between 10MHz and 4GHz, allowing an ideal range to locate any possible frequencies that match glycogens electromagnetic footprint. Data produced from the scattering parameter S11 identified a strong linear correlation between glycogen (mmol/L) and S11 (dBm), r = 0.9, p = < 0.002, with a R2 = 0.87 at 2.11 GHz. This paper provides the first significant data that an electromagnetic sensor can successfully monitor change in glycogen concentration. This provides an encouraging basis for future work to create practical non-invasive method for in-vivo detection and quantification of glycogen in human skeletal muscle. The progression of this research will be to analyse the sensor during different glycogen depletion exercise trials in human subjects.