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Muscle Enzyme Baseline

Your result, the DNA positions behind it, and what the research says.

6/10 confidence.

About Muscle Enzyme Baseline

Creatine kinase leaks slowly out of muscle into blood as a matter of routine, and a blood test measures how much is there. The reference range printed beside that number is drawn from a population, and people differ in where their own resting level sits. Two separate genes shift it: titin, the enormous spring-like protein that gives muscle its passive elasticity, and anoctamin 5, a membrane protein involved in repairing muscle fibers. Hard exercise moves the same number for days, quite separately from either.

Good to know: Creatine kinase leaks from muscle routinely; the test measures the resting level. The printed reference range is a population range, and resting levels differ between people. Hard exercise raises the same enzyme for days, quite apart from genetics.

Fun fact: Titin is the largest protein in the human body, and its full chemical name takes over three hours to say out loud.

Discovery: Common titin variants were linked to resting creatine kinase levels in large population studies of blood biochemistry.

The Variants

The 2 positions this trait reads

Gene: TTN, ANO5

rs12463674 Titin - raises resting creatine kinase

rs7481951 Anoctamin 5 - raises resting creatine kinase

Location: Chr 2:178,567,458

dbSNP rs12463674

The studies

Common and rare variants associating with serum levels of creatine kinase and lactate dehydrogenase (Kristjansson RP et al., Nature communications, 2016)

Other lifestyle traits

Endurance Wiring: A change in the master switch for building new mitochondria, the process that underlies aerobic endurance and the response to endurance training.

Endurance or Power Leaning: A marker for the classic ACE insertion/deletion variant, the most-studied genetic difference in sports performance.

Joint Flexibility: A variant in a collagen gene that helps set how stiff or supple your tendons and ligaments are.

Back to All Traits

Content updated September 2026.

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