Abstract
Background: Physical activity is a complex phenotype influenced by millions of genes and environmental factors. It is well known that physical performance and sports ability are linked to genes variations. Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the frequency of PGC1-α and CKMM gene polymorphisms in elite hockey athletes. Methods: Fifty Iranian elite national hockey athletes and 100 non-athletes participated in this study. To determine the genotypes of PGC1-α and CKMM gene polymorphisms, 2 mL of saliva was sampled and used for DNA extraction. To determine the genotypes, the PCR-RFLP method was employed. After examining the variants, the allele and genotype frequencies of subjects were measured. Results: The results showed no significant differences for the PPARGC1A gene in the percentage of AA, GG, and AG genotypes. Similarly, the percentage of these genotypes of the CKMM gene did not differ significantly between athletes and non-athletes. Conclusions: The results suggest that the gene polymorphisms of PGC1-α and CKMM are the same between the Iranian elite hockey athletes and non-athletes, which may be due to the overlapping effect of other genes and/or the small sample size of the study.