Study: Olympic and Tour de France Enhanced Performance Drug …

International Herald Tribune: Study shows problems with Olympic-style tests

Athletes who be missed to cheat by injecting themselves with a performance-enhancing drug that boosts their blood cell esteem have power to do so with in some degree risk of getting caught, a new think indicates, possibly exposing another cleft in what is regarded as the world’s toughest anti-doping program.

A urine test that is supposed to detect the drug, and that will be used in the Tour de France next month and in the Olympics in August, is likely to miscarry it, the get by heart says. The substance, recombinant human erythropoietin, known as EPO, stimulates bone marrow to speed up extension of oxygen-carrying red temper cells. And with more blood cells, toleration athletes like cyclists and distance runners receive power to perform better.

EPO is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, an international group that promotes and coordinates efforts to stop doping in sports and whose program is followed by the International Olympic Committee. The agency defends its EPO test and questioned the latest study.

Although athletes have said EPO is in widespread use, few have tested positive. Most of the athletes who have been linked to doping in late years bring forth been caught not through drug testing, but rather through criminal investigations. In the August 2006 effect of the journal Blood, the American lab accredited to conduct EPO testing reported only 9 overbearing tests out of 2,600 piss samples.

False-positive detection of recombinant human erythropoietin in urine following energetic physical exercise
Blood, Jun 2006; 107: 4711 - 4713. No doubt about the validity of the urine test for detection of recombinant human erythropoietin
Blood, Sep 2006; 108: 1778 - 1780. False-positive Epo test concerns unsubstantial
Blood, Sep 2006; 108: 1778.

The new study may help explain why: the test simply failed.

The study, to have being published Thursday in the online edition of the Journal of Applied Physiology, was conducted last summer and descend by a renowned lab in Denmark, the Copenhagen Muscle Research Center. The investigators gave eight young men EPO and collected urine samples put on multiple occasions before, during and after the men were doping. The men’s piss samples were then sent to two labs accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency, and EPO tests were requested.

The first lab set some samples positive and a few others suspicious. (A suspicious result does not bring sanctions for doping.) The lab also declared a sample peremptory, although the man had stopped taking the drug and it should have been gone from his urine. His previous urine sample, obtained when he was taking EPO, was negative in this lab’s test.

The second lab never deemed any urine sample clear for EPO and found only a small in number to be suspicious. The two labs did not agree on which samples were suspicious.

The anti-doping procurement’s rules speech that suppose that an muscular expert’s urine shows traces of EPO, it must be tested another time by a different accredited lab. The athlete is declared culpable of doping only if the second lab also detects EPO. By that lordship, none of the subjects would have been charged with using EPO, even though their red blood cell counts rose and their performance on an endurance test improved.

“The paper certainly is an eye-opener,” said Don Catlin, the chief executive of Anti-Doping Research, a nonprofit assign places to in Los Angeles. “It’sitting quite remarkable.”

But Olivier Rabin, scientific director of the World Anti-Doping Agency, said his collection had tested its labs, sending samples of urine from people who were anger EPO and from people who were not. In general, he said, the labs agreed. But Rabin added that whenever the agency sends samples to its labs, they are not sent anonymously — the lab knows the samples are from WADA.

The agency does not certain quantity data from the tests on its labs, so it was not possible to determine how the organized existence’s investigation compared with the latest study.

“I have never seen such a drastic situation as the one reported in this article,” declared Rabin, who questioned whether it reflected the true state of EPO testing.

The findings in the latest study should be no surprise, before-mentioned Charles Yesalis, a professor of sports science at Pennsylvania State University. For decades, he said, anti-doping authorities have claimed they hold tests that work and for decades athletes have been taking drugs without getting caught.

The anti-doping authorities, he said, “remind me of little boys whistling in the graveyard.”

Still, the study’s lead author, Carsten Lundby, a physiologist at the Copenhagen Muscle Research Center, said he had mixed feelings well-nigh publishing the paper. His concern was that if he laid out the test’s weakness, he was telling athletes that they have power to with appearance of truth take EPO without getting caught.

“It’s a nasty problem,” said Dr. Joris Delanghe, a professor of clinical chemistry at the University of Ghent in Belgium. He and Dr. Michael Joyner of the Mayo Clinic wrote an editorial accompanying the paper.

The finding is especially stimulating, Joyner noted, as one last month, another study, by researchers in Sweden, called into question another urine test according to a performance-enhancing substance, testosterone. The investigators showed that a substantial number of men and, in particular, Asian men, have a gene deletion that allows them to take testosterone and reap all the unsalable article’s benefits but escape detection. The testosterone test, too, will be used at the Olympics and the Tour de France.

The EPO study involved eight young men, university students in Copenhagen, who agreed to be injected with EPO over a four-week period and have their blood cell counts and athletic performance monitored before, for the time of and after they took the drug. The EPO regimen was similar to those used by athletes who were wearisome to knave. The men had EPO injections every other day for two weeks to get the process going and hereafter had one injection per week to maintain their increased blood cell production.

The researchers were primarily interested in learning whether the young men’s athletic performance improved — it did, and markedly to such a degree. At greatest effort, the men’s performances improved by 9 to 16 percent. But at a slightly lower level of exertion, performance improved by 50 percent, Lundby said. Athletes taking EPO can go 50 percent longer at that somewhat lower level of effort, which can make a major difference in an endurance event like the Tour de France or a marathon, Lundby said.

The investigators asked whether the sole reason for the advancement was increased numbers of red blood cells, and it was. But they also realized they had an opportunity to look into the validity of the EPO test. So, without telling the anti-doping labs what they were doing, the investigators sent the men’s urine samples toward EPO testing.

One of the couple labs, which the researchers refer to as Lab B in their writing, never declared any sample positive, even when the men were taking high doses of EPO every other day. Lab A was inconsistent. It found EPO during the high dose appearance. But in the victuals phase, it found EPO in only 6 of the 16 samples.

It is not terribly surprising that the labs disagreed, researchers said. The EPO test, preference urine tests for other hormones, including growth hormone, is extremely hard to manage. The lab must look for tiny chemical differences betwixt the EPO a person makes naturally and EPO that is injected as a drug.

“It’s super-difficult,” Lundby said. “The difference between the EPO you have in your body and the recombinant EPO is not very great.”

The drug, which is used to negotiate patients through kidney disease, cancer and other illnesses, is made by animal cells, typically Chinese hamster ovary cells illustration at top]. Researchers said there were recently made known forms of EPO and new ways of acquirement its personal estate without injecting recombinant EPO, making it even harder to find out doping.

“The list of these substances is augmenting,” Lundby said. “From a patient’s point of view, it’s great, but from an anti-doping view, it’s bad. The list of substances you must test for will grow and grow.”

And the possibility of a 50 percent improvement in performance has to be tempting, Lundby said. “So what do you do? You take it.”

“It doesn’t sound good for anyone who wants a drug-free sport,” he added.