A recent investigation into Hungarian Olympic champions suggests slower epigenetic aging and differences in gene methylation patterns between champions and non-champions [1].
Exercising your way to longevity
Exercise seems to be the best lifestyle factor to slow aging and alleviates many aging-associated diseases and molecular changes.
We have previously reported that exercise positively impacts cognition in older people, has protective effects against motor nerve degeneration, lowers the activity of the inflammatory SASP in the elderly, and increases levels of autophagy, a cellular process with longevity-promoting effects. Previous research has also shown that exercise may act as a natural senolytic.
Most of this research describes interventions in which participants exercise at moderate levels. However, some people, particularly professional athletes, train almost daily for several hours. Those athletes often start intense exercise at a young age. Such long-term interventions started early might have a long-term impact on the epigenome, which chemically controls how genes are expressed.
One such alteration is DNA methylation. Multiple epigenetic clocks utilize methylation patterns to assess the rate of aging, and exercise is known to impact their results. While the benefits of moderate exercise have been thoroughly documented, the authors of this study were interested in the impact of high amounts of it, such as by professional athletes that have achieved Olympic medals.
Olympians’ decreased age acceleration
The researchers recruited 59 Hungarian Olympic gold medalists, 10 females and 49 males, and 329 controls, 161 female and 168 male. The control group consisted of 205 master rowers, with the remainder being healthy, untrained volunteers. The age range of the study participants was between 24 and 101 years. The Olympians’ mean age was 53 for females and 52 for males. The control group’s mean age was 60 for females and 58 for males.
The researchers measured the epigenetic age of the participants using multiple epigenetic clocks. While there were some differences between the clocks, the authors highlight the Hannum and Skin-Blood clocks, which indicated significantly decreased epigenetic age acceleration in female Olympic champions compared to female non-champions. Similarly, when male Olympic champions were compared to male non-champions, the Skin-Blood and PhenoAge clocks showed significantly decreased age acceleration.
The researchers also estimated telomere length from methylation data and “found that the age-adjusted DNAm telomere length increased in Olympic champions compared to the non-champions for both sexes.”
Sex-specific age acceleration patterns
Athletes are usually at the peak of their performance when they win medals. Therefore, the researchers divided the athletes into two groups: “Olympic champions who earned any medal in Olympic games, World, European, or League Championships less than 10 years before blood sampling,” referred to as ‘recent medalists’, and the second group, who won medals more than 10 years before blood sampling and are referred to as ‘past medalists.’
Comparing the age acceleration in those two groups revealed sex-specific differences. For male champions, the researchers observed significantly lower epigenetic age acceleration in the recent medalists’ group compared to the past medalists’ group, as indicated by several clocks.
The DNAmFitAge and GrimAge clocks showed the opposite for females. Female champions had significantly higher epigenetic age acceleration in the recent medalists’ group compared to the past medalists’ group.
The sport matters
Different sports can impact the body differently. The researchers analyzed age acceleration to analyze the impact of different sports disciplines on Olympic champions; however, it was done only for the disciplines represented by at least three champions. They only found differences among the male athletes. For males, the age acceleration “in wrestling was significantly higher compared to that of gymnastics, fencing, and water polo according to some epigenetic aging clocks.”
The authors point out that their sample size in this analysis was small, so they do not draw strong conclusions, but they speculate factors such as different types of training, nutrition, weight-controlling methods, and education (in this study group, fencers and water polo players held higher levels of education than wrestlers) might contribute to the observed results.
Those results seem to go in line with the results of a study on which we previously reported, which analyzed associations between professional sports and longevity. In that study, the researchers reported gymnastics and fencing to be among the highest-scoring sports for life extension in males (8.2 and 6.6 years, respectively). Water polo still had a quite high positive impact (3.6 years), while the effect of wrestling was very minor (0.5 years).
The cellular level
The researchers also investigated the data on a more granular level by analyzing methylation levels of CpG sites associated with the promoter region of each gene. They identified the top 20 differently methylated genes between champions and the control group.
First, they analyzed hypomethylated genes. The DNA in hypomethylated regions is more accessible for transcription factors, which can encourage gene expression. The Olympic champions’ most hypomethylated genes were involved in regulation of complex cellular signaling, transfer processes, differentiations, and force generation.
On the other hand, hypermethylation leads to gene silencing. The genes hypermethylated in Olympic champions were involved in tumor suppression, telomere maintenance, fertility, and cellular signaling.
Long-lasting effects
The researchers discuss that their results suggest that exercise impacts long-term epigenetic alterations. They highlight previous research that shows that lifestyle choices during puberty or adolescence impact adult DNA methylation patterns [2, 3]. They further suggest that as Olympic champions often start their training young and continue into adolescence, this positively impacts their DNA methylation even after they have stopped their training routines as adults.
Literature
[1] Radák, Z., Aczél, D., Fejes, I., Mozaffaritabar, S., Pavlik, G., Komka, Z., Balogh, L., Babszki, Z., Babszki, G., Koltai, E., McGreevy, K. M., Gordevicius, J., Horvath, S., & Kerepesi, C. (2024). Slowed epigenetic aging in Olympic champions compared to non-champions. GeroScience, 10.1007/s11357-024-01440-5. Advance online publication.
[2] de Vocht, F., Suderman, M., Tilling, K., Heron, J., Howe, L. D., Campbell, R., Hickman, M., & Relton, C. (2018). DNA methylation from birth to late adolescence and development of multiple-risk behaviours. Journal of affective disorders, 227, 588–594.
[3] Kankaanpää, A., Tolvanen, A., Heikkinen, A., Kaprio, J., Ollikainen, M., & Sillanpää, E. (2022). The role of adolescent lifestyle habits in biological aging: A prospective twin study. eLife, 11, e80729.
