Are elite endurance athletes genetically predisposed to lower disease risk?

Gomez-Gallego F, Ruiz JR, Buxens A, Altmae S, Artieda M, Santiago C, Gonzalez-Freire M, Verde Z, Arteta D, Martinez A, Tejedor D, Lao JI, Arenas J, Lucia A. Are elite endurance athletes genetically predisposed to lower disease risk? Physiol Genomics 41: 82-90, 2010. First published December 22, 2009; doi:10.1152/physiolgenomics.00183.2009.-We compared a polygenic profile that combined 33 disease risk-related mutations and polymorphisms among nonathletic healthy control subjects and elite endurance athletes. The study sample comprised 100 healthy Spanish male nonathletic ( sedentary) control subjects and 100 male elite endurance athletes. We analyzed 33 disease risk-related mutations and polymorphisms. We computed a health-related total genotype score (TGS, 0-100) from the accumulated combination of the 33 variants. We did not observe significant differences in genotype or allele distributions among groups, except for the rs4994 polymorphism ( P < 0.001). The computed health-related TGS was similar among groups (23.8 +/- 1.0 vs. 24.2 +/- 0.8 in control subjects and athletes, respectively; P = 0.553). Similar results were obtained when computing specific TGSs for each main disease category ( cardiovascular disease and cancer). We observed no evidence that male elite endurance athletes are genetically predisposed to have lower disease risk than matched nonathletic control subjects.