Introduction. Football is the most popular sport worldwide, but injuries are very common in football game. In recent years sport medicine physicians, scientists were looking for the ways to reduce injury incidence and to identify the genetic factors of injuries. The aim of this study was to investigate the collagen genes polymorphisms (COL1A1 rs1800012, rs1107946, COL3A1 rs1800255, COL12A1 rs970547) in professional Lithuanian football players.
Materials and methods. A total of 150 professional footballers (31 forwards, 49 midfielders, 58 defenders, 12 goal- keepers) and 150 controls (healthy non-athletes male) from Lithuania were recruited for this study. Genomic DNA was extracted from peripheral blood leukocytes. Genotyping was performed using real time PCR.
Results. There were no difierences in genotype/allele frequency distributions, for COL1A1 rs1800012 and COL12A1 rs970547 among all groups of participants. However, significant COL1A1 rs1107946 genotype distribution were determined between the footballers and controls (CC/CA/AA: 60.7/36.7/2.7% vs 71.3/21.3/7.3%; p=0.004). Analysis of the footballers according to the position on the field showed significant COL1A1 rs1107946 genotype distribution in the midfielder group compared to controls (CC/CA/AA: 55.2/41.4/3.4%, p=0.012). Odds ratio of COL3A1 rs1800255 AA genotype and being professional football players was 0.315 (95% CI 0.086-0.929, p=0.05).
Conclusions. The results suggest no association between COL1A1 rs1800012, COL12A1 rs970547 polymorphisms and footballers performance. However, COL1A1 rs1107946 and COL3A1 rs1800255 are associated with physical performance of Lithuanian footballers. COL1A1 rs1107946 showed over-dominance (heterozygote advantage) i.e. heterozygote footballers have better physical features for sport than controls. Minor allele A of COL3A1rs1800255 is negatively associated with physical performance of Lithuanian footballers.
