Orvosi laboratóriumi technológia (benne laboratóriumi minták diagnosztikai elemzésének
technológiája)
Sportegészségügy
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 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.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.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.
