New way to catch drug cheats in sport

The use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports continues to be a source of serious concern for both national and international sports organisations.

However, thanks to research conducted at the School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee, Scotland, one type of doping in sport could be a thing of the past when a new approach to drug-use detection is implemented across the sporting world.

Research leader Professor Mike Rennie and his team believe their discovery will spell the end of testosterone abuse. They have found that they can distinguish natural testosterone from pharmaceutically made testosterone that is abused by some athletes to build muscle for strength and speed.

Explaining the new method, Prof. Rennie said: "It is relatively easy to detect synthetic anabolic steroids which have been used for years by cheating athletes to increase their muscle bulk. All that is needed is a small urine sample and a relatively simple piece of analytical equipment - a gas chromatograph.

"The cheats and their advisers realised this and started to use testosterone (that is found in the body) in the chemical form. They expected that it would act identically to the normal hormone and also, because it is so similar to the natural substance, that it would be impossible for drug testers to tell the two apart, letting the extra dope they take go undetected.

"Unfortunately for them, the testosterone they take is made by pharmaceutical companies from plant steroids - the same steroids used to make the birth-control pill - and plants and animals have very different ways of making steroids.

"Both set of steroids are marked with a distinctive 'signature'. We are developing a method, using a very sensitive mass spectrometer, that can distinguish between the natural signatures carried by the carbon and hydrogen atoms in normal bodily testosterone and the testosterone that is made from plant material," he added.

Prof. Rennie and colleagues realised that there was a gap in the armoury of drug testers trying to detect athletes who cheat by using testosterone rather than artificial anabolic steroids and looked for support to develop the new method.