Exercise training modifies the whole blood DNA methylation profile in middle-aged and older women

Abstract

This is a longitudinal single-arm clinical trial aimed to investigate whether exercise training would modify the whole-blood methylation profile in healthy women. A total of 45 subjects were engaged in an exercise training protocol during a 14-week follow-up, consisting of aerobic cardiorespiratory and muscle strength exercises. Subjects were evaluated at baseline (PRE), after 7 weeks of exercise training (POST 7), and after 14 weeks of exercise training (POST 14). Functional primary outcomes included anthropometric, blood pressure, biochemical measurements, physical tests, and global health assessments. Blood samples were collected at each time point to determine the methylation profile using a DNA methylation array technique screening up to 850k different sites. Exercise training decreased blood pressure and triglyceride levels and enhanced physical performance, including upper and lower-body maximum strength. Moreover, exercise training improved markers of quality of life. In the array analysis, 14 weeks of exercise training changed the methylation of more than 800 sites. Across these differentially methylated sites, we found that differentially methylated sites in the promoter region were more hypermethylated after exercise training, suggesting that this hypermethylation process may affect the transcription process. When inputting the differentially methylated sites in pathway analysis, we found several metabolic pathways, including AMPK signaling, TGF-beta signaling, and insulin signaling. This study demonstrates that exercise training promotes a robust change in the whole-blood methylation profile and provides new insights into the key regulators of exercise-induced benefits.

8-week Combined Exercise Protocol Promote Health and Cardiovascular Benefits in Obese Women by Epigenetic Modifications: a Prospective Study

“…The extent of their involvement in adaptive gene regulation programs, particularly in physical exercise, has just been systematically explored. Notably, Rodrigues et al [12] identi ed C2H2-ZF motifs in a study related to training, mirroring the attention garnered by this TF family in our research. Collectively, our ndings contribute to a growing body of evidence emphasizing the potential signi cance of C2H2-ZF proteins in the molecular responses to physical exercise, and the therapeutic nature of this target should be investigated in further studies.…”

“…It is already known that physical exercise bene ts cardiovascular, metabolic, muscular, and skeletal health through several mechanisms [10], including epigenetics modi cations [11]. In this context, researchers have explored how physical exercise can modulate DNA methylation pro le in different populations, including elderly individuals [12] or healthy young individuals [13]. However, there is still a gap to be lled about exercise-induced epigenetic effects in obese women.…”

ARYANA-BS: Context-Aware Alignment of Bisulfite-Sequencing Reads

“…We should note that these rules are not zero-one rules, as there are well-known hypermethylated CpG islands in different tissues and diseases [16, 39, 37, 6]. There are also observations about flanking regions of CpG islands, called CpG island shores [24].…”

Combined exercise training decreases blood pressure in OLDER women with NOS3 polymorphism providing changes in differentially methylated regions (DMRs)

“…We used 8 exercises for strength training, including 3 for the lower limbs and 5 for the upper limbs. The training protocol included leg curls, leg presses 45°, leg extensions, triceps with a neutral grip, bicep curls with dumbbells, lat pulldowns on the high pulley, seated rows, and inclined bench press exercises [ 30 ].…”

“…The literature shows that combined exercise training presents significant clinical changes for adult women when NOS3 polymorphisms are not used as a comparison [ 8 , 30 , 31 ], but there remains a need to understand whether these clinical changes are in sync when we analyse DNA methylation when genetics can be a limiting factor for the best clinical response to physical exercise.…”