Scientific ASIA

Analyses of Blood Protein can Answer why People Respond Differently to the Same Exercise Regime

No one can deny the fact that exercise improves the quality of life and may add years to life, but the effects of exercise are different for everyone based on their level of fitness, activity level, and health status. There are people who when exercise can see a significant difference in their endurance level, while some report better glycemic controls. A group of researchers including Jeremy Robbins an MD, of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at BIDMC have found the answer to be biological pathways and protein biomarkers that identify exercise responsiveness in humans.

The study was conducted on 654 sedentary adults, as they were put under 20 weeks long endurance exercise program, and the levels of different proteins (approximately 5000) and biomarkers were analyzed from their blood samples.

This study emphasizes the importance of a personalized training regime, as they identified that hundreds of proteins correspond to an individual’s train-ability and response to exercise. This study will help not only designing an effective training regime by simply analyzing an individual’s blood sample but will also help in the prevention of diseases. This is a one-of-a-kind study that helps in identifying who can have better cardio-respiratory fitness from exercise training, as reported by Robert Gerszten one of the authors of the study. Some 147 proteins are associated with cardio-respiratory fitness, which is also referred to as VO2max. VO2max is a measure of the amount of oxygen that your body uses and transfers to oxygen. Higher VO2max denotes that a person is fit.

The researchers were successful in identifying 102 proteins that can affect or are related to VO2max by the end of the study after an exercise program. They matched the values of those proteins against the predicted individual’s train-ability. Here train-ability refers to the change in the VO2max after training. Based on the data, the researchers were able to identify the volunteers whose VO2max level wouldn’t elevate as much from endurance exercises. Thus, they were able to categorize several baseline protein levels that showed which person would respond well to exercise training protocol than others.

This team of the researcher also identified certain protein to be associated with early death, as they were more related to cardiac fitness and mortality rates. For this same author ran a separate community-based study.

This study is an important advancement in defining the better and efficient customized exercise program based on individual needs. It has made it easier to design the personalized exercise program by linking proteins with the VO2max or cardio-respiratory fitness. This can not only improve the response but also improve compliance to exercise among people, once they get the positive feedback post-exercise. Now, this hypothesis has to be tested on larger sample size, and more influencing factors for VO2max, including proteins need to be measured.

This study has been a benchmark in explaining one of the many reasons why some people respond differently to others when doing the same exercise. This new list of blood compounds that are influenced by exercises and in turn affect cardio-respiratory fitness could now also predict the individual responses to the proven exercise routine.


Exercise, cardio-respiratory fitness, endurance, VO2max, exercise compliance, blood compounds, proteins, metabolism, plasma proteomic profiles, response to exercise.

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