Genome-Wide Association Study of Lean Body Mass Response to Resistance Training in Young Asians.
Gu Z, Mei T, Yang X, He Z, Wu J, Li X et al. · Journal of cachexia, sarcopenia and muscle · 2026
Background: Resistance training (RT) is an established intervention for increasing lean body mass (LBM), individual hypertrophic responses exhibit significant heterogeneity, largely influenced by genetic factors. This genome-wide association study (GWAS) aimed to identify novel genetic variants associated with changes in lean body mass (∆LBM) following RT and to develop a genetic predisposition score (GPS) for predicting LBM trainability.
Methods: A total of 187 sedentary adults (51.3% female, mean age 21.5 ± 2 years) completed a supervised 12-week periodized RT programme. The protocol involved squats and bench presses at 70% 1-repetition maximum (5 sets × 10 repetitions; 2-min rest) performed twice weekly. ∆LBM was precisely quantified using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) before and after the intervention. Genotyping was performed on venous blood-derived DNA using the Illumina Global Screening Array-24v1-0. GWAS for ∆LBM was conducted using linear regression in PLINK 1.09, adjusted for baseline LBM, body mass index (BMI), age, region and sex (genome-wide
Significance: threshold: p -8 ). A weighted GPS was subsequently constructed in SAS 9.3 based on significantly associated variants.
Results: The RT programme elicited significant LBM gains across the cohort (p -8 ): rs10212396, rs12519717, rs12055037, rs2131183, rs75968146, rs4370982, rs74038095, rs73966436, and rs12625907. The developed GPS explained 27.7% of the observed ∆LBM variance (p
Conclusions: This study, representing the first GWAS of RT-induced LBM adaptation, successfully identified nine novel genetic variants and establishes a robust GPS that accounts for 27.7% of interindividual variation in LBM response. These
Findings: provide foundational genetic markers crucial for deciphering the mechanisms underlying muscle hypertrophy and significantly advance the prospects for developing personalized exercise prescriptions.