Research

Hormonal

Sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) acts as a potential mediator in the causal relationship between higher cardiorespiratory fitness and lower type 2 diabetes risk.

Higher fitness is linked to higher levels of SHBG, which is known to protect against type 2 diabetes. This suggests that improving fitness may work partly by optimizing your hormone binding profiles.

ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
Integration with proteomic data identified N-terminal pro B-type natriuretic peptide, hepatocyte growth factor-like protein and sex hormone-binding globulin as potential mediators of this relationship.
Lina Cai et al. · Nature Communications · 2023

Why this rating

Proteomic associations are nominal (not all Bonferroni-corrected) and require further validation, though supported by previous MR studies.

Source

Causal associations between cardiorespiratory fitness and type 2 diabetes

Lina Cai et al. · Nature Communications · 2023

DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-38234-w

cohort · n=73574Cited 51×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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