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

• Published in: Medicine and science in sports and exercise Vol. 56; no. 5; p. 868
• Main Authors: Juhász, Vencel, Ország, Anna, Balla, Dorottya, Szabó, Liliána, Sydó, Nóra, Kiss, Orsolya, Csulak, Emese, Babity, Máté, Dohy, Zsófia, Skoda, Réka, Becker, Dávid, Merkely, Béla, Benczúr, András, Vágó, Hajnalka, Kerepesi, Csaba
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01.05.2024
• Subjects: Adult; Aging; Athletes; Hematologic Tests; Humans; Nutrition Surveys; Sports - physiology
• ISSN: 1530-0315
• DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000003380

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.