Annual banned‐substance review: analytical approaches in human sports drug testing

Abstract

The aim of improving anti-doping efforts is predicated on several different pillars, including, amongst others, optimized analytical methods. These commonly result from exploiting most recent developments in analytical instrumentation as well as research data on elite athletes' physiology in general, and pharmacology, metabolism, elimination, and downstream effects of prohibited substances and methods of doping, in particular. The need for frequent and adequate adaptations of sports drug testing procedures has been incessant, largely due to the uninterrupted emergence of new chemical entities but also due to the apparent use of established or even obsolete drugs for reasons other than therapeutic means, such as assumed beneficial effects on endurance, strength, and regeneration capacities. Continuing the series of annual banned-substance reviews, literature concerning human sports drug testing published between October 2014 and September 2015 is summarized and reviewed in reference to the content of the 2015 Prohibited List as issued by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), with particular emphasis on analytical approaches and their contribution to enhanced doping controls.

Non-targeted metabolomics in sport and exercise science

“…Although GC-MS and LC-MS are not currently employed for exercise and sport-based situations in training or performance contexts, they are commonly used in anti-doping strategies for testing of athlete samples for banned substances (Thevis, Kuuranne, Walpurgis, Geyer, & Schanzer, 2016).…”

Chemical fingerprinting and quantitative monitoring of the doping drugs bambuterol and terbutaline in human urine samples using ATR-FTIR coupled with a PLSR chemometric tool

“…1,2 The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) establishes the regulations concerning doping drugs across all sports all over the world. 3 The use or attempted use of prohibited substances by athletes is considered a violation of these rules. Since such issues correspond closely to criminal cases under forensic investigations, urine samples are collected in and out of competitions and exposed to a variety of analytical examinations developed to monitor the presence of a banned substance.…”

“…4,5 The WADA rules classify b 2 -agonists such as bambuterol HCl (BAM) and terbutaline (TER) as stimulants and anabolic agents with a restricted specic regulation. 3 Athletes oen use BAM for therapeutic purposes as a treatment for exercise-induced asthma. 6 However, there are some adverse effects of the use of b 2 -agonists, such as anabolic and stimulation effects with the increase in myocardial contraction and heart rate, increase in the accretion of muscle proteins and a reduced rate of fat deposition; 7 thus, this drug and its metabolite TER 8 have been included in the list of prohibited doping agents.…”

“…6 However, there are some adverse effects of the use of b 2 -agonists, such as anabolic and stimulation effects with the increase in myocardial contraction and heart rate, increase in the accretion of muscle proteins and a reduced rate of fat deposition; 7 thus, this drug and its metabolite TER 8 have been included in the list of prohibited doping agents. 3 The detection of BAM and TER as doping drugs for routine analysis in urine samples has been accomplished mainly by chromatography techniques such as GC/MS 9,10 and LC-MS/MS. 11 Although these methods have high potential in the ght against doping drugs, they suffer from many disadvantages, such as the use of very expensive instruments, being non-portable, need for highly qualied operators, high operation cost, moderate throughput, limitations with respect to solvents and samples, long operation times, and too many sample preparation steps.…”

Identification of epidermal growth factor (EGF), in an unknown pharmaceutical preparation suspected to contain insulin like growth factor 1 (IGF‐1)

“…Reports originating from controlling agencies residing in Germany, the UK, Denmark, Norway, Italy, the USA, Australia, and Belgium show that monoclonal anti-cancer antibodies, insulins, growth hormones, human chorionic gonadotropin, Clostridium botulinum toxin type A, potential doping peptides, putative anti-obesity drugs, skin tanning peptides, neuropeptides and a putative anti-cancer polypeptide were identified in seized samples. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] The danger of these illegal polypeptides resides in the fact that these polypeptide products are not produced under controlled environment and therefore may contain the wrong ingredient, the wrong dosage, bacteria, viruses, heavy metals, etc., which could result in severe health issues. In some cases these illegal acts had a deadly outcome.…”