Genes Help Explain Who Gets Fit
Story Summary: The researchers stress that exercise has benefits, regardless of whether or not a person can improve aerobic capacity. Indeed, elite athletes often have very high VO2 maxs compared with average Joe. However, about 20 years ago, some scientists started to question whether or not the link between training and fitnesslevel was so clearcut. In other words, a good portion, but not all, of a persons capacity to get more fit was set by their heredity. Exercise genesTo find out, Bouchard and his colleagues, who came from 14 different institutions, used data from three separate exercise studies, including the Heritage. They initially identified, using a novel approach, a set of 29 genes that seemed to predict a persons ability to improve their VO2 max. Of this 50 percent, the newly identified genes can only explain about 23 percent of the variation in an individuals ability to be trained to improve VO2 max. With this we can identify, with a reasonable degree of precision, who is a low responder to exercise, an average responder, or a high responder, Bouchard said. In addition, in the Heritage study, the people who improved their fitness (VO2 max) the most werent necessarily the ones who improved their blood pressure the most, or lowered their cholesterol. Real-world implicationsWhile Bouchard feels this study is a big step forward, more work is needed before it can have real-world applications, including finding more genes and then verifying the markers in other populations. But down the road, the findings may have practical uses. For instance, if someone learns they are a low responder to exercise, they know they may need to be more aggressive with their training in order to see an increase in their endurance. While other scientists agree that the work is intriguing, and notable for its unique approach to find and verify genes, they feel more research is needed. I think the question still remains as to how important these genes are in contributing to the improvements….Read the Full Story
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