Maturity-associated polygenic profiles of under 12–16-compared to under 17–23-year-old male English academy football players

McAuley, ABT, Varley, I ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3607-8921, Herbert, AJ, Suraci, B, Baker, J, Johnston, K and Kelly, AL, 2023. Maturity-associated polygenic profiles of under 12–16-compared to under 17–23-year-old male English academy football players. Genes, 14 (7): 1431.

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine polygenic profiles previously associated with maturity timing in male academy football players across different age phases. Thus, 159 male football players from four English academies (U12–16, n = 86, aged 13.58 ± 1.58 years; U17–23, n = 73, aged 18.07 ± 1.69 years) and 240 male European controls were examined. Polygenic profiles comprised 39 single nucleotide polymorphisms and were analysed using unweighted and weighted total genotype scores (TGSs; TWGSs). There were significant differences in polygenic profiles between groups, whereby U17–23 players had more genetic variants associated with later maturity compared to U12–16 players (TGS, p = 0.010; TWGS, p = 0.024) and controls (TGS, p = 0.038; TWGS, p = 0.020). More specifically, U17–23 players had over two-times the odds of possessing >36 later-maturing alleles than <30 compared to U12–16 players (odds ratio (OR) = 2.84) and controls (OR = 2.08). These results suggest there was a greater proportion of relatively later-maturing players as maturation plateaus towards adulthood, which may be explained by the ‘underdog hypothesis’. This study provides the first known molecular evidence that supports the notion that a maturity selection bias exists within male academy football.

Item Type: Journal article
Publication Title: Genes
Creators: McAuley, A.B.T., Varley, I., Herbert, A.J., Suraci, B., Baker, J., Johnston, K. and Kelly, A.L.
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date: 2023
Volume: 14
Number: 7
Identifiers:
Number
Type
10.3390/genes14071431
DOI
1783742
Other
Rights: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Divisions: Schools > School of Science and Technology
Record created by: Linda Sullivan
Date Added: 19 Jul 2023 10:45
Last Modified: 19 Jul 2023 10:45
URI: https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/49387

Actions (login required)

Edit View Edit View

Statistics

Views

Views per month over past year

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year