Exercise reverses blood markers of frailty in older adults
Physical performance scores rose from 9.1 before intervention to 10.1 after a 16-week exercise program in 44 older adults.
44 participants, controlled, multicenter
Limit: Only 24 controls and 44 exercisers were included in the final sample
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
A controlled study examined 44 older adults (38 women and six men, median age 79) who completed a 16-week supervised exercise program and 24 non-exercising controls (14 women and 10 men, median age 80). All participants were aged 70 or older and recruited from hospital outpatient clinics.
Participants in the exercise program improved their physical performance scores from 9.1 to 10.1, grip strength from 16.9 to 18.3 kilograms, and gait speed from 0.78 to 0.85 meters per second. Their frailty criteria fell from 2.1 to 1.6, and scores for sarcopenia, an age-related loss of muscle mass, dropped from 3.0 to 2.1. In blood tests, four of six FRAILOMIC markers and six of seven BIOFRAIL markers significantly reversed their expression after training. A comparison group of 21 older men receiving hormone therapy for prostate cancer showed no such reversals. No adverse events or deaths occurred.
Why it matters
Frailty increases vulnerability to disability and death as people age, but tracking biological recovery after physical interventions has lacked validated molecular tools. The findings suggest that specific blood-based biomarkers could serve as objective measures to evaluate whether lifestyle interventions improve biological frailty in older adults.
Caveats
Participants were not randomly assigned to groups, and the findings reflect an analysis of completers after voluntary dropouts reduced the initial 98 participants to 44 exercisers and 24 controls. The small exercise group was predominantly female, and the trial excluded older adults with moderate-to-severe cognitive impairment or dependency in daily living.
From the paper
- Participants
The cohort included 98 participants (32 controls and 66 exercisers) with similar rates of adherence: control (75%) and exercise (66.7%), resulting in a final sample of 24 controls and 44 exercisers.
- Who took part
Inclusion criteria: Women and men with an age equal to or over 70 years old, ability to walk, ability to follow a physical exercise programme, ability to perform all the functional tests and provide signed informed consent.
- Duration
The exercise group underwent a supervised, tailored, 16‐week multicomponent physical programme.
- Short Physical Performance Battery
Notably, the exercise intervention led to improvements in several measures, including grip strength, SPPB, MNA‐SF and BMI.
- Fried Frailty Phenotype
Besides, frailty, as measured by the frailty phenotype, improved significantly after the 16‐week physical training.
- EGR1
Notably, the exercise group showed a statistically significant reduction in G0S2, EGR1 and CXCL8 expression, along with a significant increase of DDX11L1 and miR454 expression in post‐intervention samples.
Quoted word for word from the full text on PubMed Central.
Exercise is part of Bryan Johnson's Blueprint
The paper
Biogipuzkoa Health Research Institute; Ikerbasque
Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle, Aug 2026, Open access
