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Muscle creatine levels and sprint performance in young adult vegans and vegetarians after 7 days of creatine monohydrate supplementation

Thomas Christian Bonne, Valentina Arthemalle, Colin Stephen Doherty, Andreas Breenfeldt Andersen, Jacob Bejder, Thomas Ehlers, Henrik Holm-Sørensen, Nikolai Baastrup Nordsborg
Physiol Rep 2025 13(17):e70539

Bibliography

PubMed
PMID 40939139
PubMed Central
PMC12431585
DOI
10.14814/phy2.70539
Funding
No funding information provided (paper statement).
Competing interests
Authors declared no conflict of interest.

Study snapshot

DesignRandomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial
ModelHuman
Sample15 healthy young adult vegans/vegetarians (7 creatine, 8 placebo)
InterventionCreatine monohydrate 0.3 g/kg/day versus maltodextrin placebo, divided into four daily servings
Duration7 days
EndpointsMuscle creatine; Total creatine; Phosphocreatine; Repeated-sprint peak power; Repeated-sprint mean power; Body mass; Fat-free mass

What the study showed, in plain terms

Small randomized trial testing a short creatine loading protocol in young vegan and vegetarian adults, with direct muscle-creatine measurements and repeated-sprint performance outcomes.

Key findings

Seven days of high-dose creatine increased muscle creatine and total creatine stores, but did not significantly improve peak or mean power during the repeated-sprint test compared with placebo.

What this study can and cannot tell us

Only 15 participants were studied for seven days. The trial was small, short, focused on recreationally active plant-based adults, and was more informative about tissue loading than about longer-term performance adaptation.

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Dr. Khaled Mahmoud, MBBChCritical Care Medicine, Longevity Science & Editorial Direction