Genetics Outwit Doping Tests?

[L'ilJ]

I found this NYTimes article very interesting. Basically saying that some men are missing the two genes needed to convert ingested/injected testosterone into a form that can be detected in the urine. Apparently this is a common trait in Asian men (two-thirds lack both copies of the genes) and there are articles out there suggesting that many Chinese atheletes can basically take testosterone and not have positive drug tests. Could be interesting discussion leading up to the Olympics.

April 30, 2008

Some Athletes’ Genes Help Outwit Doping Test

By GINA KOLATA
Correction Appended
The 55 men in a drug doping study in Sweden were normal and healthy. And all agreed, for the sake of science, to be injected with testosterone and then undergo the standard urine test to screen for doping with the hormone.
The results were unambiguous: the test worked for most of the men, showing that they had taken the drug. But 17 of the men tested negative. Their urine seemed fine, with no excess testosterone even though the men clearly had taken the drug.
It was, researchers say, a striking demonstration of a genetic discovery. Those 17 men can build muscles with testosterone, they respond normally to the hormone, but they are missing both copies of a gene used to convert the testosterone into a form that dissolves in urine. The result is that they may be able to take testosterone with impunity.
The gene deletion is especially common in Asian men, notes Jenny Jakobsson Schulze, a molecular geneticist at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. Dr. Schulze is the first author of the testosterone study, published recently in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
Dr. Schulze learned from an earlier study that about two-thirds of Asian men are missing both copies of the gene, as are nearly 10 percent of Caucasians. The prevalence in other groups is not known.
Doping researchers said the study raised questions about what to do next.
“It’s disturbing,” said Dr. Don Catlin, the chief executive of Anti-Doping Research, a nonprofit group in Los Angeles. “Basically, you have a license to cheat.”
Should athletes give DNA samples for scientists to analyze as genes like the testosterone-metabolizing one are found to be important? Or would another approach, the so-called athlete’s passport, be sufficient? The passport, favored by the World Anti-Doping Agency, is a record of all of an athlete’s screening tests and would detect results that vary from the athlete’s baseline values — but it would not include gene testing and therefore may not detect those athletes lacking this gene.
But nothing will happen soon, and certainly not in time for the Beijing Olympics in August.
Testosterone and substances that act like it are the most frequently detected drugs in screening tests of athletes. The antidoping agency reported that these drugs have been implicated in 43 percent of its positive doping tests.
Researchers have long known that some men, Asians in particular, seemed to be able to take the drugs without getting caught, although no one had identified the cause of the phenomenon. Without gene testing, there is no way to know whether any athletes have exploited this doping loophole, but Dr. Catlin says he suspects some athletes discovered their invulnerability by accident and took advantage of it.
Men with the gene deletion still metabolize testosterone, Dr. Schulze says. But, she adds, she does not know where the hormone goes. “We have no idea,” she said. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
The gene in question adds a chemical, glucuronide, to testosterone. That converts it from a substance that dissolves in oil into one that dissolves in water and urine.
The testosterone screening test looks for testosterone and another substance, epitestosterone, that is produced in parallel to testosterone but does not have testosterone’s effects. The antidoping agency considers a testosterone to epitestosterone, or T to E, ratio of four or greater a positive test and follows it with a more expensive and definitive test that asks whether the excess testosterone is of human origin or whether it is from plants. The testosterone used in doping usually comes from plants.
When they conceived of their study, Dr. Anders Rane and Dr. Mats Garle, head of the Doping Control Laboratory at the Karolinska University Hospital, applied for and received a grant from the antidoping agency. Then, to test their hypothesis, the Karolinska scientists injected the men with 500 milligrams of testosterone and looked at T to E ratios over the next 15 days as the testosterone was metabolized.
The men with two normal copies of the gene had T to E ratios that soared to 100; those with one copy of the gene had ratios that reached 50; those with no copies had almost no rise in their ratios and 40 percent of them had a ratio that never reached 4.
Dr. Schulze and her colleagues suggest that athletes be tested to see if they have the testosterone-metabolizing gene. Others said the testing of athletes for this and other genes may be coming soon.
“The specter of doing this is out there,” says Dr. Alvin Matsumoto, a testosterone expert at the University of Washington in Seattle and the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System.
The World Anti-Doping Agency is studying instead the athlete’s passport. It hopes to keep track of each athlete’s drug tests to see if any results suddenly change compared to before.
“You are in a situation where you monitor the athlete and you can see right away if there are modifications” in test results, said Olivier Rabin, the science director of the agency.
Dr. Rabin is less enthusiastic about genetic testing because, he said, it raises ethical questions.
But in either case, it is not clear what to do if an athlete has a genetic feature that makes doping tests turn out negative when the athlete is using drugs. The testosterone follow-up test is technically complex and expensive, raising questions about whether it is feasible to use it for as many as two-thirds of Asians and 10 percent of Caucasians.
“The analytical facilities and costs required preclude any routine use of this methodology for screening in antidoping testing,” Dr. Schulze and her colleagues wrote.
And the newly discovered gene deletion may be just one reason the T to E ratio test may fail in some men.
There may be more than a dozen testosterone-metabolizing enzymes, said Dr. Shalender Bhasin, a testosterone researcher at Boston University School of Medicine, and it may be necessary to examine all of them to see if gene variations affect test results. He added that there may be differences in the way men and women metabolize testosterone, so a separate study on women would be necessary to determine whether the gene deletion affects their testosterone tests the same way.
Still Dr. Catlin said, the work by the Karolinska scientists offers hope for the future, showing that the doping world is entering a new era.
“To me it’s inevitable that we are going to learn more and more about how genes are influencing the outcome of tests,” he said. “It’s here,” he added. “We might as well get used to it.”

[tkinsley]

Hmmm. I wonder if they avoid the dreaded asparagus funk as well.....

Weird

[Frank.S]

and everyone has the ability to fool any test for gh, igf-1, igf1lr3, insulin, mgf, ghrp, + more.. that combined with using testosterone suspension which will always test negitibe after about 24 hours, and tests not designed to test for new (legal usually) prohormones which are steroids (just, legal by technicality).

pretty much, drug testing is the biggest joke in spot.

[Fulmen]

+If they ever get the kinks out of the myostatin blockers then the drug testers are screwed.

Good times.

[Frank.S]

100mg test suspension every day (stopping 2-3 days out)
60mg epistane everyday - non tested oral aas
6iu GH everyday
50mcg igf-1 post workout
10iu insulin pwo

this is a guy i train withs approx cycle, he lifts in the ipf and is tested LOL. such a joke.

[Simon C]

It is a joke for many people with the means to do this, but it works pretty well for many people too. It sends alot of people out of the IPF into non-tested federations because they know they are doping, and don't know how to beat the tests.

But at the top level, drug testing is almost useless I agree, but the IPF recently caught a fair few of the russian international PL team!!! Not that that makes much of a difference, unless the whole team gets banned(which it might haha), as they pretty much have another 10 lifters that will win the worlds anyway

I think it works well in Australia, in Powerlifting anyway. As the Powerlifting community is so small, with only a couple hundred IPF lifters. We pretty much only have 2 feds here, IPF affiliated, and WPC affiliated. Most of the doping athletes just go to the WPC fed, as most just don't have the means to fool the drug test. Granted we still do get a few who are doping, but not too many.

[Frank.S]

Simon, how would you ever know how many people where using? there is simply no way to tell.

The Russians got caught I believe from random offseason testing which they couldn't stop everything in time. Even so, look at my above post, you would have to change 1 compound and you would be fine year round.

[Simon C]

Well the community is so small, I know this as I compiled the Powerlifting Australia Rankings this year(I pretty much can recognise the name of any lifter), I didn't count the competitors, but theres definitely under 200, probably around 100-150.

So everybody knows everybody, especially all the top guys know who everyone is. There is a doping violation maybe once every couple years only. There is one guy that we think might be using now though, he's added an insane amount to his total in less than a year.

So all the top guys(not many of them again) know eachother, and the shitty weak lifters probably aren't using(it would be funny), and even if they are well it doesn't seem to matter haha

And with the drug testing, well random out of competition testing is good actually, because even though doped lifters can pass drug tests and win world championships, these lifters wouldn't pass the test every single day of the year, only on select says when they know they could/will b tested. So random out of competition testing does end up doing some good.

[Frank.S]

then you get someone who smokes pot 2 months and gets dq'ed. while the guy doing lines of coke 3 days before the test and taking untestable drugs passes.

the aas that can be taken while passing a doping test are much harder on the system (typically because they are lesser known orals) then the well known ones like testosterone. So, if its going to be used anyways, which it is, why not let the athletes do it in the healthiest way possible. You got a bunch of guys doing big amounts of insulin which can be fatal and pass every single test, take some deca a year ago and youll fail.

[Fulmen]

Originally Posted by Frank.S

then you get someone who smokes pot 2 months and gets dq'ed. while the guy doing lines of coke 3 days before the test and taking untestable drugs passes.

the aas that can be taken while passing a doping test are much harder on the system (typically because they are lesser known orals) then the well known ones like testosterone. So, if its going to be used anyways, which it is, why not let the athletes do it in the healthiest way possible.

Agreed; society can be ridiculous sometimes. You either have to choose between Hepatotoxicity or insulin related-problems.

Great choices.