DNA Methylation on PPARG and its Relation to Sports Injury and Pain in Male Football (Soccer) Players at all Levels

Injuries in English football are a cause of great financial burden to clubs and cause distress to players and coaching staff, therefore novel interventions to help prevent injuries should be considered to aid this burden. 287 male players across multiple levels of the English football leagues were tested using saliva for methylation levels across the gene Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor- Gamma (PPARG), a known inflammation modulation gene. Player injury status and pain scale for each player was analysed at the point of testing to compare against the PPARG methylation status. The average methylation across PPARG on non-injured players was 0.508 and on those injured (n=78) was 0.4488, the difference between player/s indicating a pain score of 10 against the players indicating a pain score of 0 was +0.2437 towards the lower pain result. Therefore, it is theorised that PPARG hypomethylation occurs in response to injury or/and overtraining to aid in the inflammation processes of the body, this study will require further investigation to establish this link. Follow-up analysis on the same players that indicated injury and a high pain score to see if PPARG methylation returns to normative values upon physical improvement is also a logical step for further analysis.