ergo-log.com

Definition: "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance "

15.11.2018

It's coming: a breathalyzer for anabolic steroids

Doping hunters from the German Sport University Cologne are developing a completely new type of doping test. The new test does not require sweat, blood, urine, hair or mouth swabs, but will enable doping hunters to detect the use of anabolic steroids and other banned substances by analyzing the breath of athletes. O my.

Study
The German biochemist and doping hunter Mario Thevis published a human study in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, which delivered proof of principle and showed that the detection of banned substances by analyzing breath is possible. In the publication Thevis tells, among other things, that he collected a group of test subjects who used doping substances, and then analyzed their breath with LC/MS/MS.

The subjects were "either [...] patients using the drugs in question in regular therapeutic settings or [...] individuals participating in elimination studies investigating the same substance classified as doping agents." Thevis needed the subjects to exhale 20 liters or air for his measurements. When a adult exhales, he produces about half a liter or air.

Results
Thevis and his colleagues were able to detect meldonium, DMAA, oral-turinabol and pseudoephedrine in the breath of their subjects.

Conclusion
"The results of this pilot study and literature data from the field of therapeutic drug monitoring and forensic analyses indicate that drugs of rather different physico-chemical nature are traceable in exhaled breath", the Germans summarize.

"Consequently, a considerable number of compounds relevant for doping controls could be monitored via exhaled breath sampling in potential future sports drug testing programs that could utilize the non-invasive sample collection approach of exhaled breath."

"To date, information on analyteconcentrations in exhaled breath, detection times, etc., are still limited to a small number of relevant compounds. Hence, follow-up studies are required to assess the full potential of exhaled breath as an alternative matrix in doping controls, and a considerable expansion of the spectrum of compounds that can be monitored from exhaled breath is needed."

"This necessitates utmost analytical sensitivity considering the minute amounts of target analytes expected to be eliminated via an athletes' breath."

Source:
Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom. 2017 Aug 15;31(15):1290-6.

More:
Doping tests for methandienone, stanozolol and dehydrochloromethyltestosterone vastly improved 30.06.2014
So that's why doping hunters don't find EPO any more 14.09.2010
'Right' gene lets you inject testosterone without getting caught by doping test 25.04.2009

Archives:
Doping Detection

Doping test confuses sulbutiamine with boldenone Researchers at the Moscow Antidoping Centre discovered this when they happened to do tests on the urine of an employee who was using sulbutiamine.	Weird samples Doping hunter Mario Thevis of the German Sport University wote in a trade journal for lab analysts about the most remarkable doping samples he had examined in recent years.	Nine percent of doping violations due to supplements Sports scientists at Victoria University in Australia came to this conclusion after analysing all recent doping violations recorded in Australia, England and the US.