Performance-enhancing drug detection

The annual cost of conducting more than 100,000 drug tests to detect performance-enhancing drugs in athletes in the United States is about 30 million. 

A major challenge to the analytical chemist in testing for the presence of performance-enhancing drugs is the fact that new substances are constantly becoming available, and experimental protocols must be developed for detecting them. Moreover, athletes... 

Stage 17 was tested, apparendy a very high T E ratio (reportedly 11 to 1) was detected and it is also reported that he had failed the CIR test. Landis has admitted using performance-enhancing drugs for much of his career, but denies using testosterone or other drugs on the 2006 tour. 

Steroids have had a major beneficial effect on human well-being, as medicines and in the control of fertility. However, abuse of steroids as performance-enhancing drugs in competitive athletics has surfaced occasionally. Thus, the sports world was shaken when illicit use of the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) was discovered in 2003— designed to avoid detection in doping tests. 

Detecting Performance-Enhancing Drugs Using Mass Spectrometry... 

Doping in athletics Testosterone is a potent performance-enhancing drug that is used in both human and equestrian sports. The current method to detect testosterone abuse is based on measurement of the testosterone to epi-testosterone ratio using GC or LC/MS techniques. However, this method is not reliable because some clean individuals may naturally register a positive result and the measurement must... 

Methods for the identification and determination of pharmaceutical drugs in the forensic setting are required in order to detect their abuse and misuse (e.g., accidental or suicidal overdosage, homicidal poisoning, illicit performance enhancement). Some pharmaceutical drugs may also enhance the toxic potential of illicit drugs and/or alcohol and their determination is necessary in order to ascertain cases of mixed-drug intoxications. 

The elevated diuresis, as induced by different mechanisms by diuretic agents, has been employed to counteract hypertension and selected kidney diseases for several decades. Due to the capability of diuretics to mask other banned compounds by urine dilution rather than any performance-enhancing property, these drugs were added to the list of prohibited substances and methods of doping in 1988. Early attempts to detect the misuse of diuretics in sports were based on GC-MS, and particularly methylated analytes were subjected to El dissociation studies. 

A systematical approach of sample preparation methods and optimisation of the quality aspects of sample preparation may enhance the efficiency of total analytical methods. This approach may also enhance the quality and knowledge of the methods developed, which actually enhances the quality of individual sample analyses. Unfortunately, in bioanalysis, systematical optimisation of sample preparation procedures is not common practice. Attention to systematical optimisation of assay methods has always been mainly on instrumental analyses problems, such as minimising detection limits and maximising resolution in HPLC. Optimisation of sample extraction has often been performed intuitively by trial and error. Only a few publications deal with systematical optimisation of liquid-liquid extraction of drugs from biological fluids [3,4,5]. 

Figure 1.1 Pharmacologist Dr. Donald H. Gatlin sits in front of an LC/MS/MS system, an instrument used for detecting drugs from urine samples, at the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory. Gatlin is noted for developing a breakthrough testthat detects the illegal steroid, tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), taken by athletes to enhance performance.

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