Anabolic Steroids And Drug Testing (part 1)
Virtually all competitive sports involve drug testing in many of their events. In most cases, although some may argue this point, it is a fact that the vast majority of the competitors have been using, or are still using at the point of the competition, performance enhancing drugs. It is simply human nature in a highly competitive athlete to find an ‘edge’ over his or her competition, and this often comes in pharmaceutical form, coupled with a plan of action to ‘beat the test’.
You will find in certain competing sports such as power lifting and body-building that almost every competitor is drug tested. This is so that they are all competing on a par except for the natural talent level of course, but if the truth were to be revealed; it’s the guy who takes steroids and who knows how to cheat the test, who actually ends up winning. “That’s not fair” you’re saying…Well maybe it isn’t, but that’s just what these sports have become and there’s no turning back.
There are many sporting authorities that only know how it give negative press towards the use of performance enhancing drugs, but the matter of the fact is that it is the individual who has to make that decision. Everyone knows what will happen if you get caught taking them, but once again we are back to gaining the competitive edge. We often hear of athletes who haven’t turned up for a drug tests, which can help an athlete avoid being sanctioned, but we are going to take a closer look at how the test can be beaten.
Types of Testing Procedure: The most common body fluid to be tested for the presence of drugs in athletic competition is generally urine. These articles will deal with the procedures used to test the body fluid, although the procedures used to assay blood for illegal substances are virtually identical.
Different laboratory testing processes are employed in the testing for performance enhancers so we are going to focus on just how they work in order to be able to beat them. Step 1 will be well prior to your event, that you find out which type of sample analysis is to be employed so that an effective planning to beat the test can begin as soon as possible.
Gas Chromatography(GC): This method uses a separation technique to divide a urine extract into its component chemical parts. These substances are carried through chromatographic columns by a gas: chromatography is simply a means of separating mixtures of compounds from each other, and enables identification in many cases. The chemical compounds in the urine are identified by their ‘retention time’ on the chromatographic column – the retention time is unique for each drug, and so enables identification.
Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry(GC/MS): This technique uses a combination of gas chromatography, followed by mass spectrometry on the chemicals separated out of the urine on the chromatographic column. The mass spectrometry allows exact identification of the drugs present in the urine by actually giving an exact ‘molecular fingerprint’ of the chemicals present. That is to say the chemical structure of the drugs present (the atoms present in the drug, and in the order they are bonded together) is given by this method. This is a very expensive test to use, and it could be stated that only sporting organisations with plenty of cash to hand would use it. The test’s cost is about one hundred pounds or so per sample (about $200 US).
It goes without saying that we have just covered two pretty reasonably accurate tests, but you can always expect a certain degree of human error. One of the most common would be that of poor cleaning after testing, whereby contamination could lead to the next person to be tested to get an incorrect result. So bearing this in mind should you ever come out positive when you think you shouldn’t have, well make sure you put in a protest.
High Performance Liquid Chromatography(HPLC): This technique is of particular interest because it is often used on test samples suspected of containing anabolic steroids. It’s basically similar to GC, except that a liquid is used as a carrier for the sample through a chromatographic column, rather than a gas. HPLC is both sensitive and simpler to do than GC. It is often used to check results from other, less sensitive tests.
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