Effect of menstrual cycle and contraceptive pill phase on aspects of exercise physiology and athletic performance in female athletes: protocol for the Feminae international multisite innovative project.

The idiom 'more high-quality research is needed ' has become the slogan for sport and exercise physiology-based research in female athletes. However, in most instances, it is challenging to address this gap of high-quality research in elite female athletes at a single study site due to challenges in recruiting enough participants with numerous menstrual cycle and contraceptive pill permutations. Accordingly, we have assembled an international multisite team to undertake an innovative project for female athletes, which investigates the effects of changes in endogenous and exogenous oestrogen and progesterone/progestins across the menstrual cycle and in response to second-generation combined monophasic contraceptive pill use, on aspects of exercise physiology and athletic performance. This project will employ the current gold-standard methodologies in this area, resulting in an adequately powered dataset. This protocol paper describes the consortium-based approach we will undertake during this study.
Competing Interests: Competing interests: KJE-S has received funding/honoraria from Arsenal Football Club, The UK Sports Institute, the European Club Association, Gatorade Sport Science Institute, Hologic, Science in Sport, and the UK Ministry of Defence to support female athletes. None of these funds have direct competing interests with the Feminae project. TRF has no competing or conflicts of interest. SMA has received funding from the US Department of Defence, United States Marine Corps, the Board of Medicine, and various industry sources to support research on athletic females. None of these funds have direct competing interests with the Feminae project. ED is supported by a research grant from the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP: 2019/05616-6 and 2019/26899-6) for a project unrelated to this one. She has no competing interests or conflicts to declare. BS is supported by a research grant from the São Paulo Research Foundation (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, FAPESP: 2021/06836-0) for a project unrelated to this one. None of these funds have direct competing interests with the Feminae project. MH has no competing or conflicts of interest. JI has no competing or conflicts of interest. RM has no competing or conflicts of interest. CM has received funding from the Australian Institute of Sport, the Queensland Academy of Sport, and an industry partner (cannot be named here) to conduct research on female athletes. None of these grants have direct competing interests with the Feminae project. JST is a Canada Research Chair funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. This funding does not have a direct competing interest with the Feminae project. KEA has received funding/honoraria from the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, Gatorade Sport Science Institute, Hologic, UptoDate, and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. This funding does not have a direct competing interest with the Feminae project. CML has no competing or conflicts of interest. CS has received funding from the UK Ministry of Defence to conduct research on female military personnel. This funding does not have direct competing interests with the Feminae project. TS has received funding/honoraria from the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, Ineos, Science in Sport (Sis) Own The Podium, Gatorade Sport Science Institute and Lululemon Athletica to support research, including projects on female participants. None of these grants have a direct competing interest with the Feminae project. PS has no competing or conflicts of interest. ACH has no competing or conflicts of interest.
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