PPARa GENE VARIATION AND PHISYCAL PERFORMANCE IN ITALIAN SOCCER PLAYERS

Background and Objective: One of the genes of the health-related fitness phenotype is PPARa coding for peroxisome proliferator activator receptor a, a central regulator of expression of genes involved in fatty acid metabolism. We analyzed the role of polymorphism of PPARa gene in performance enhancing in sixty italian soccer players, compared to sedentary controls.Methods: Sixty professional soccer players and thirty volunteers were enrolled in the study. Samples of venous blood were obtained in the morning by convenional clinical procedures and allowed to cloted at room temperature for 30 minutes and centrifuges. Serum was collected and total cholesterol, high density lipoprotein cholesterol, low density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglycerides were mesured by using a kit in a chinetic enzyme analyzer. An aliquote of anticoagulant-treated blood was used to prepare genomic DNA from whole blood. The polymorphic site in PPARa intron 7 was scanned by using PCR-RFLP protocol with Taq I enzyme.