The National Institutes of Health (NIH) wants to better understand how exercise affects health. Although hundreds of studies show that physical activity provides benefits to many aspects of health, how exercise does this is poorly understood.
To address this issue, the NIH Common Fund, which supports groundbreaking efforts focused on big challenges and opportunities in biomedical science, sought to address this problem by creating the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium program (MoTrPAC). MoTrPAC aims to create a molecular map of the biological changes that happen during exercise. Such a map could be used to help researchers and doctors better prescribe exercise to individuals.
An exercise study of this magnitude has never been done and will require roughly 2700 generally healthy, but sedentary adult participants that are diverse in age, sex, body composition and fitness level. Participants will engage in an exercise program, and blood, muscle tissue and other biological samples will be collected at selected clinical centers across the US. Samples will be analyzed, and the collected data will help generate the molecular map. In addition, there will be a companion study in 360 children. The molecular map will be made available to all interested researchers.
For more information, watch the video below and check the MoTrPAC website and follow the NIH Common Fund on Twitter and Facebook for updates on how to get involved!