Effects of creatine supplementation on exercise performance, physiological outcomes, and body composition in females engaged in exercise or training: a systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis
Lin Y, Zhu W, Hong B
Frontiers in nutrition · 0 citas
Cómo se estudió
- Diseño
- Revisión sistemática (indexado por PubMed)
- Estudiado en
- Personas
- Resultado principal
- Marcadores de salud y funcionamiento
Quién lo pagó
- Financiación
- Financiación independiente
Según la declaración de financiación del texto completo.
Publicación
- Publicado
- 2026-09-04 · Front Nutr · vol. 13 · pág. 1921827
- Editorial
- Frontiers Media
- Citado
- 0 citas · más que el 58% de estudios similares · 0.0× el promedio de su campo
- Referencias
- 96 trabajos
- Acceso
- Acceso abierto (revista) · CC-BY
- Áreas de investigación
- Muscle metabolism and nutrition · Sports Performance and Training · Biochemical effects in animals
- Palabras clave
- creatine supplementation, female athletes, exercise performance, body composition, physiological outcomes, strength and power, lean body mass, sex differences, training status, GRADE certainty, risk of bias, strength and conditioning, endurance training, resistance training, dietary supplements, creatine monohydrate, phosphocreatine
3 autores
- Yi Lin🇨🇳Fujian Normal University; Guizhou Normal University
- Wenfeng Zhu🇨🇳 · autor de correspondenciaGuizhou Normal University
- Banghui Hong🇨🇳 · autor de correspondenciaGuizhou Normal University
Resumen
El texto original del estudio, en el idioma en que se publicó.
Background
Female-specific creatine trials span different sports, training states and outcome types. The preceding systematic review included 27 studies and provided a narrative synthesis of performance outcomes; the average magnitude of effects across correlated outcomes remained unknown.
Objective
To estimate overall and domain-specific effects of creatine supplementation on exercise and sport performance, physiological outcomes and body composition in females engaged in exercise, sport or structured training.
Methods
PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, SPORTDiscus and CINAHL were searched for experimental studies published from 1 January 1996 to 5 March 2026. Two reviewers independently screened records, extracted data and appraised risk of bias. Female-specific creatine-vs.-control contrasts were synthesized with multilevel random-effects models and CR2 small-sample robust inference. Sensitivity analyses addressed graph-digitized and reconstructed percentage-change data and plausible within-study sampling correlations. GRADE was applied to the overall estimate and each quantitative domain. The review was retrospectively registered on OSF (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/U8V7A).
Results
The search identified 13,244 records; 160 reports were assessed in full text, and 34 studies with 692 female or female-eligible participants entered the systematic review. Twenty-one studies contributed 170 model-compatible effects from 424 analyzable participants. The overall model yielded a small positive estimate (Hedges g = 0.23, CR2 robust 95% CI 0.09 to 0.37). The performance model yielded g = 0.30 (95% CI 0.06 to 0.54), and the body-composition model yielded g = 0.24 (95% CI 0.06 to 0.43). The body-composition model combined outcomes without a uniform favorable direction. The physiological estimate was uncertain (g = 0.10, 95% CI -0.17 to 0.38). Risk-of-bias concerns and variation in protocols and outcomes reduced certainty, which was low for performance and body composition and very low for the overall and physiological evidence.
Conclusion
Available female-specific evidence suggests possible small effects on selected strength, power, high-intensity performance and lean-mass-related measures. Substantial heterogeneity, methodological limitations and low or very-low certainty prevent firm sport-specific or outcome-specific conclusions.
Systematic review registration
https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/U8V7A, identifier: OSF.IO/U8V7A.
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