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

We develop blood test-based aging clocks and examine how these clocks reflect high-volume sports activity. We use blood tests and body metrics data of 421 Hungarian athletes and 283 age-matched controls (mean age, 24.1 and 23.9 yr, 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, whereas the second one additionally incorporates body measurements and sex. We find lower age acceleration among athletes compared with the age-matched controls with a median value of -1.7 and 1.4 yr, 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. 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. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the American College of Sports Medicine.

Citation

Vencel Juhász, Anna Ország, Dorottya Balla, Liliána Szabó, Nóra Sydó, Orsolya Kiss, Emese Csulak, Máté Babity, Zsófia Dohy, Réka Skoda, Dávid Becker, Béla Merkely, András Benczúr, Hajnalka Vágó, Csaba Kerepesi. Blood Test-Based Age Acceleration Is Inversely Associated with High-Volume Sports Activity. Medicine and science in sports and exercise. 2024 May 01;56(5):868-875

Mesh Tags

PMID: 38306315

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