He formed part of Team GB's performance team during their successful London 2012 Olympics where his role was team Sport Scientist. Prior to joining the BOA, he worked as a Senior Performance Scientist for the English Institute of Sport where he was involved in provision of physiological and nutritional support to elite athletes. Brian graduated from the University of Limerick (Ireland) with a BSc in Sports and Exercise Science, part of which was spent in Australia working in Australian Rules football.
Brian then gained his MSc in Sports and Exercise Nutrition from Loughborough University before moving to Wales where he completed his PhD in Exercise Physiology. During this time, Brian worked in professional rugby union (Wales) and his research was jointly sponsored by the Wales Rugby Union and University of Glamorgan. Brian’s main research interest’s focus around the areas of training stress and performance optimisation in addition to exploring novel ways to enhance recovery.
Brian regularly carries out saliva based hormone analysis to help understand individual athlete’s responsiveness to training. Brian currently holds an honorary research position with University College London where he is guest lecturer and supervisor to a number of MSc students. He regularly consults to a number of professional sporting bodies throughout the UK within the area of saliva based research and is guest reviewer to a number of scientific journals.
Interview with Brian
1. Can you tell us about the major themes in your research programme?
My research themes can often vary greatly depending on the nature of the research question as determined by our sporting national governing bodies. Whilst I often work within an exercise laboratory, the majority of my time is spent carrying out research projects within the field. Such research focuses on key performance questions as dictated by medical staff or coaches within our Olympic sports. Generally topics include novel ways to monitor training load and associated markers of training adaptation, warm up optimisation, training stress and recovery. Given the non-invasiveness of saliva as a medium to understanding HPA-axis and immune tolerance, it offers wide ranging scope in field based research. With respect to elite sport, measured saliva analytes can provide objectivity around individual athlete training thresholds and responsiveness to training stress or travel so long as there is clear and correct monitoring of training load. Understanding such can be key in aiding decision making, providing the stimulus for change or in many instances, reassurance that what a coach/practitioner is currently doing is indeed correct!! Recent research has been spent understanding non-physical stress in the lead up to major events such as an Olympic games and how inappropriate recovery can affect mental health of coaches and support staff. For this project, stress related makers such as saliva cortisol proved key.
2. If you had to pick one publication in the past five years as the "best of your best", what would it be and why?
Since a lot of my work is carried out on small numbers of elite athletes, this, in addition to issues around athlete anonymity does not always allow for such work to be published. However, if I was to choose a paper, it would probably be “Mucosal immunity and illness incidence in elite rugby union players across a season, Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2011 Mar;43(3):388-97. As an applied scientist, one of the key questions I often ask is do you understand the training cycle and more importantly, your athletes at ‘risk periods’ during a season. This paper attempted to explore this concept from an immunological perspective in conjunction with daily training load across a training year.
3. How did you get interested in using saliva in your research?
When I was studying for my MSc in Loughborough University, I volunteered for a number of research studies that were currently undergoing in the laboratories there under the supervision of Prof Mike Gleeson. I remembered seeing some of my results on completion of one of the trials and was fascinated with how both exercise and circadian rhythm affected my markers. Upon completion of my MSc, I undertook my PhD investigating training stress in an elite rugby cohort and so non-invasiveness was one of my primary objectives in getting athlete adherence to repeated sampling. Saliva therefore provided the most obvious choice of collection fluid for understanding how our immune and hormone systems are affected by training stress and recovery.
4. Which salivary analtyes are you working with?
We currently look at concentrations of SIgA, cortisol, testosterone, DHEA and alpha-amylase.
5. How has working with saliva changed the direction of your research plans?
Since saliva can be taken repeatedly and non-invasively, it therefore allows for greater clarity when trying to understand how an athlete responds to a particular training intervention. If biomarkers were not readily accessible in saliva, sampling of blood would prove too invasive for my study population, particularly if I wanted to monitor on a regular basis.
6. What analyte is not measured in saliva now that you would hope could be measured in the future?
I would like to see if it is possible to measure some neuropeptides like nerve growth factor accurately in saliva. Whilst we often try to understand our endocrine and immune systems, I would like to understand further what happens to neuropeptides with respect to CNS stress. Additionally, having a point of care system to analyse multiple analytes at one time would be a tremendous advantage to my job.
7. What advice would give young investigators who might be considering working with saliva in their research?
Don’t just take saliva for the sake of it. Make sure you understand what affects it and how are you controlling for it? I sometimes have colleagues contact me for advice on projects centred around hormone analysis or once off sampling. When I dig a little deeper, there is often no clear quantification of training load (input) and so without this, it’s impossible to determine what is affecting the output (or biomarker in this instance). Therefore, making sure you avoid ‘sampling for the sake of sampling’ would be my main advice. If you are intending to publish this work, it will nevertheless be peer reviewed. However, if you are looking at biomarkers in the field, having information that you know affected the analtye of interest allows you to make informed decisions. Otherwise, it can give sports science a bad name amongst coaches, athletes and medical practitioners!!
In addition to this, knowing what extraneous variables affect your given biomarker is crucial as these will ultimately impact upon the result. Simple things like knowing how the biomarker changes in concentration throughout the day, impact of collection method, time left out of a freezer, impact of food, chewing, environmental stimulus during collection etc. can all impact upon analysis. Without knowing what affects the biomarker, it’s impossible to mitigate against things that effect it!! Finally, if you are analysing the markers yourself in a laboratory, spend a great deal of time perfecting your laboratory skills. I remember having to pipette water for hours on end until my duplicates were of sufficient quality, at the time I thought it was overly pedantic, I now realise it is crucial to know the result you are giving to your client is meaningful and error free. Analysis can sometimes be expensive so avoid having to repeat the trial again!!
8. Tell us something about you (a hobby or special interest) that we would be surprised to know?
Having grown up on a dairy farm in West Ireland, I am a keen lover of everything outdoors. Hours were spent playing the ancient Gaelic game of “hurling” across our many fields. To increase my shot accuracy, I used to try and pick out a relevant feature in the distance and hit it with the ball (called “sliotar” in Irish). Unfortunately, many sliotars were never found!! This is a sport which I still participate in when I can.
Contact Brian to talk about his Research: brian.cunniffe@boa.org
Learn more about Salivary Bioscience
www.salimetricseurope.blogspot.com
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