Parents turn to genetics to test toddlers' sports aptitude

BOULDER, Colo. - When Donna Campiglia learned recently that a genetic test might be able to determine which sports suit the talents of her 2 1/2-year-old son, Noah, she instantly said, "Where can I get it, and how much does it cost?"

"I could see how some people might think the test would pigeonhole your child into doing fewer sports or being exposed to fewer things, but I still think it's good to match them with the right activity," Campiglia, 36, said as she watched a toddler class at Boulder Indoor Soccer.

In health-conscious, sports-oriented Boulder, Atlas Sports Genetics is playing into the obsessions of parents by offering a $149 test that aims to predict a child's natural athletic strengths. The process is simple. Swab inside the child's cheek and along the gums to collect DNA and return it to a laboratory for analysis of ACTN3, one gene among more than 20,000 in the human genome.The test's goal is to determine whether a person would be best at speed and power sports like sprinting or football, or endurance sports like distance running, or a combination of the two. A 2003 study discovered the link between ACTN3 and those athletic abilities.

In this era of genetic testing, DNA is being analyzed to determine predispositions to disease, but experts raise serious questions about marketing it as a first step in finding a child's sports niche.

Atlas executives acknowledge that their test has limitations but say that it could provide guidelines for placing youngsters in sports. The company is focused on testing children from infancy to about 8 years old because physical tests to gauge future sports performance at that age are, at best, unreliable.

Some experts say ACTN3 testing in its infancy and virtually useless. Dr. Theodore Friedmann, the director of the University of California-San Diego Medical Center's interdepartmental gene therapy program, called it "an opportunity to sell new versions of snake oil."

" This may or may not be quite that venal, but I would like to see a lot more research done before it is offered to the general public," he said. "I don't deny that these genes have a role in athletic success, but it's not that black and white."

Stephen M. Roth, director of the functional genomics laboratory at the University of Maryland's School of Public Health, has studied ACTN3, and said he thought the test would become popular. But he had reservations.

"The idea that it will be one or two genes that are contributing to the Michael Phelpses or the Usain Bolts of the world I think is shortsighted because it's much more complex than that," he said.

Roth called ACTN3 "one of the most exciting and eyebrow-raising genes out there in the sports-performance arena," but he said that any test for the gene would be best used only on top athletes looking to tailor workouts to their body types.