Watchdog. Don Catlin of the University of California, Los Angeles, is an authority on doping in sport.
Damian Dovarganes / AP photo
last Thursday, we organized a science Live Chat on "Science Olympics" in which we asked the researchers for their views on new scientific innovations planned to enter the Olympic stadium in London this week. We intended to discuss dentures and performance-enhancing drugs, but unfortunately our expert blood-doping, Don Catlin, was unable to join us. Catlin is an expert on drug use in sport and professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He founded the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory, a national site drug testing of improving performance and is used by the NCAA, the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and the Olympic Committee of the United States.
After the chat we sent him questions about the use of athletes agents such as erythropoietin (EPO), which produces additional cells of red blood cells, and the human growth hormone ( HGH), which increases strength. He also discussed epitestosterone, a hormone that is nearly identical to testosterone but does not improve athletic ability. It is used to mask a high level of testosterone. Readers also asked about the implications of biological passports that individual athletes record results doping test and the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) scandal high profile, which outed several prominent professional athletes for using enhancing drugs performance. Here are his answers.
Q: What new methods of doping are you more concerned about
DC: My main concern is the attempts to thwart tests current using mini-doses of EPO and EPO-like drugs and HGH. There are people looking for ways to use doping agents and not get caught. They conduct clandestine clinical research, but they do not have the approval of the ethics committee, and of course they do not file reports on their studies. Nevertheless, the "subjects" provide details to each other describing their doses, dates of tests and test results. In a sense, their model is powerful because it is based on the doses and the results of human tests. However, it lacks control and many features of legitimate pharmacology protocols. We do not know how many people are involved, but there is evidence that EPO mini-doses may be avoided positive results. Finally, a low dose does not provide effective for participants.
Q: Do you feel the biological passport system holds up as a way to catch doping athletes
DC the theory behind the passport program is very solid, and all doctors can relate to it because they use every day in their work. In practice, passports are very difficult to prove the use of the drug. They can not rely on legitimate clinical studies. They rely on huge databases, but outliers can be complicated. The body's response range of relevant variables is huge. At that time, I would have expected more cases were published. People who take decisions must be very careful, which is probably why there are not so many cases. The data are not available for review. I gave from my own studies, but not from studies conducted by the University of California, Irvine. I think in time, the passports will mean more defensible case of doping. It is one more tool in the arsenal of antidopers.
Q: Did the BALCO files provide new information regarding the use of steroids and HGH
DC: He provided no new information for me. I expected this kind of doping for several years; However, when I spoke at conferences about the possibility that it was difficult to generate interest in a theoretical possibility. The BALCO case was extremely important because it proved, without a doubt, that brand-name drugs, epitestosterone ratio to normalize the testosterone-epitestosterone, etc., was actually in progress. What bothered me then and now is that Victor Conte, president of BALCO, was able to use a legitimate commercial laboratory to work on the pharmacokinetics of testosterone and epitestosterone. The laboratory should have alerted the authorities that one of their customers was involved in using doping efforts.
I doubt that Patrick Arnold [the chemist who created the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone] knew derivatized THG would break into the injection port of the gas phase mass spectrometer chromatography (GC-MS) instrument. This was probably beyond his chemical knowledge, but it did extend our studies of THG. Finally, it took a major change in the way we select for anabolic steroids. Now we use liquid chromatography mass spectrometers in phase, since it does not require derivatization.
Q: Do you agree that certain compounds / drugs / chemicals / vitamins should be considered illegal for competition? Why?
D.C..:. Yes. I think we should continue to use urine tests to enforce doping. I thought of other ways to do this, but none work. If we abandon the tests and allow all medicines, we will virtually compel athletes to dope because the drugs do not improve performance. If there is no test all athletes are equal again, but all will be on drugs. Some will push the envelope and take high doses so that there will be many side effects. We must recognize that there are difficulties with urine tests. It is not the "perfect" solution, but on balance, it is useful and better than the alternative without test. I think they should do as much as possible to enhance the control of doping. There are probably alternative programs as a voluntary program doping control. I also believe that the [World Anti-Doping Agency] WADA list could be reduced a little.
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