Exercise addiction is a behavior that may dysregulate athletic performance, and social and professional interactions of athletes. Whereas environmental factors including training routines and personal traits could contribute to exercise addiction, recent studies have emphasized the importance of genetic predisposition, leading to development of a subfield known as sports psychogenetics. In sports psychogenetics, ankyrin repeat and kinase domain containing 1 (ANKK1) and dopamine receptor D2 (DRD2) genes, located on chromosome 11 in a close proximity, have attracted research interest due to their involvement in dopaminergic signaling playing a crucial role in reward processing, motivation, cognition and behavior. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate potential associations between 14 polymorphisms in ANKK1/DRD2 and exercise addiction among elite badminton players (n = 39) and elite wrestlers (n = 68). Exercise addiction was assessed using a psychometric screening instrument and allele frequencies of the selected polymorphisms were analyzed through genotyping with a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) microarray. Results indicated that two SNPs, rs7118900 and rs4436578, were significantly and independently associated with exercise addiction. Rs7118900 has previously been associated with an increased risk of drug addiction, neuroticism, and depressed effect whereas rs4436578 has been associated with neuroticism. In addition to those SNPS, rs2283265 and rs1125394 SNPs were also linked to exercise addiction in a branch-independent manner. Therefore, it is proposed that these SNPs could serve as genetic markers for identifying individuals at high risk of exercise addiction among athletes. However, further research is needed to understand the involvement of these SNPs in exercise addiction more comprehensively.

Vertical jump performance is known to be a moderately heritable trait. However, previous studies on sport genetics have largely relied on candidate-gene approaches, which do not adequately reflect the polygenic nature of explosive performance, particularly among elite badminton players. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to identify genetic variants associated with lower-limb explosive performance, assessed via vertical jump measures, among elite Turkish badminton players using a genome-wide association study (GWAS) approach. The present study included 90 elite male (n = 47) and female (n = 43) badminton players, and 557 non-athletic controls sourced from a public database. Performance-related traits were evaluated through countermovement jump (CMJ), squat jump (SJ), and their differential. Genome-wide genotyping was performed using DNA microarrays, and associations were examined using linear mixed models fixed for sex/gender, body mass index, and sport experience. Although no variants reached genome-wide significance (p < 1.00 × 10⁻⁷), 13 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) exceeded the suggestive threshold (p < 1.00 × 10⁻⁵). CMJ-associated variants were rs4905767, rs2911702, rs10246591, and rs9842454; SJ-associated variants were rs55817650, rs62318127, rs115197840, rs78317172, and rs35930589; and CMJ–SJ-associated variants were rs34638064, rs6679342, rs4931233, and rs9442615. The present study provides preliminary evidence that lower-limb explosive performance among elite badminton players is polygenic, involving regulatory and signaling pathways rather than single performance genes.