Blood Test–Based Age Acceleration Is Inversely Associated with High-Volume Sports Activity

Abstract

Purpose We develop blood test-based aging clocks and examine how these clocks reflect high-volume sports activity. Methods We use blood tests and body metrics data of 421 Hungarian athletes and 283 age-matched controls (mean age 24.1 and 23.9 years, respectively), the latter selected from a group of healthy Caucasians of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to represent the general population (n = 11,412). We train two age prediction models (i.e., aging clocks) using the NHANES dataset: the first model relies on blood test parameters only, while the second one additionally incorporates body measurements and sex. Results We find lower age acceleration among athletes compared to the age-matched controls with a median value of -1.7 and 1.4 years, p < 0.0001. BMI is positively associated with age acceleration among the age-matched controls (r = 0.17, p < 0.01) and the unrestricted NHANES population (r = 0.11, p < 0.001). We find no association between BMI and age acceleration within the athlete dataset. Instead, age acceleration is positively associated with body fat percentage (r = 0.21, p < 0.05) and negatively associated with skeletal muscle mass (Pearson r: -0.18, p < 0.05) among athletes. The most important blood test features in age predictions were serum ferritin, mean cell volume, blood urea nitrogen, and albumin levels. Conclusions We develop and apply blood test-based aging clocks to adult athletes and healthy controls. The data suggest that high-volume sports activity is associated with slowed biological aging. Here, we propose an alternative, promising application of routine blood tests.

Organ specificity and commonality of epigenetic aging in low- and high-running capacity rats

“…It is possible, that the effect of high CRF on the rate of aging is milder in females compared to males. This would be consistent with our recent study where we found that standard blood test-based age acceleration largely decreased in male athletes compared to the healthy male controls but did not significantly decrease in female athletes compared to healthy female controls 38 . Other previous study has shown that the age acceleration in the high-fit group was significantly lower than in the medium-to low-fit group for both men and women, but the difference was slightly lower for women 8 .…”

“…It is well known that exercise promotes systemic health benefits through adaptations in various organs, such as the brain, heart, lungs, and liver 11,43,44 , and exercise is one of the promising “geroprotectors” in humans to date 45 . The mechanisms underlying the healthspan-promoting effects of exercise are not fully understood; however, changes in gene expression patterns due to alterations in global and gene-specific promoter methylation may partially explain this physiological phenomenon 38 . In addition to the fact that promoter methylation is most affected in the soleus muscle, the fact that the promoter methylation of seven genes is commonly affected by CRF in various organs may have important implications for understanding the molecular basis of CRF and longevity.…”