Athlete's Biological Passport

This is a very interesting article I received from AST Sports Science. I am anti-drug, and I especially despise it in competitive sports, it's cheating. I work hard to get where I am and I don't want to compete against a pharmacy, and unfortunately, in many cases, I am doing just that.

As SC once told me "drugs" work!, any idiot can succeed with them"

The Athlete’s Bio-Passport is Here: Drug cheats beware!

 By Paul Cribb Ph.D. CSCS

Competitive athletes take note, testing for banned substances has reached an entirely new level. Late last year the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) released a document describing the long-awaited "athlete’s biological passport" – a new dimension in drug detection.



Under usual testing procedures, an athlete would provide a urine or blood sample for the direct detection of selected banned substances. However, with the athlete’s biological passport the entire composition of an athlete's blood is under scrutiny for illegal doping, even if no substance is found.


The fundamental principle of the Athlete Biological Passport is based on the monitoring of selected biological variables which indirectly reveal the effects of doping.


Under the guidelines approved by WADA, an athlete provides a series of samples which become a biological ‘fingerprint’ for that individual. Regular updated records of blood measurements for each athlete are obtained, compared and contrasted throughout their entire career.


Biological monitoring throughout an athlete’s sporting career should make any prohibited preparation much harder to implement.


The athlete’s biological passport was first suggested in 2002 and is already being piloted by several major sports federations. The International Cycling Union (UCI) has been piloting biological passports for the past two years on 840 cyclists in Italy and Spain. The UCI has already found five athletes whose passports have been deemed suspicious and are awaiting a doping verdict in coming months.


This method is already used by the International Skating Union (ISU) and has resulted in a guilty verdict, a first for this kind of monitoring. After some unusual blood-cell readings, German speed skater Claudia Pechstein has been banned from competing for two years – a very important legal precedent.



The ISU detected spikes in the proportion of Pechstein's blood cells that were reticulocytes, young red blood cells recently released from bone marrow. Normally, about 1% are reticulocytes, but the proportion climbs to 3% following doping with substances such as erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone that promotes the development of new red cells.


The ISU accused Pechstein of illegally enriching her blood. Pechstein claimed the abnormal counts were because of a blood disease, and appealed the decision.


There are natural causes for altered reticulocyte count, such as anaemia. However, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the world authority for adjudication on doping cases, ruled in favour of the ISU, rejecting Pechstein's claim that she had a blood condition after a haematologist (selected by the athlete) was unable to find any signs of disease.


How do you assess blood doping?



Heamatocrit is the proportion of blood volume occupied by red blood cells. Red blood cell count is the number of red blood cells per volume of blood. Changes in these alongside an increase in haemoglobin mass can be indicative of doping.



Other measures such as the mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC), which is a measure of the concentration of haemoglobin, can be used to reflect and support these changes in red blood cell count and heamatocrit.




Normally the proportion of reticulocytes in adult blood is about 1% of all red cells. However, use of erythropoietin (EPO – an illegal substance) will characteristically boost this to 3 or 4%.


WADA is hoping for widespread adoption of these biological passports because they have the ability to detect signs of doping without identifying specific substances, which can be elusive. They might also detect doping that doesn't involve illegal substances but produces measurable effects on the body, such as blood transfusions or even gene doping. It may never replace the assessment of banned substances. However, one pertinent aspect, is that every reading is retained, the bio-passport never forgets.

New EPO Like Drug

I think you can tell that I am pretty anti-drug. I just find it hard to believe that people would jeopardize their health for a trophy, or a photo-shoot, a paycheck, it's crazy.

It is one thing if people are stupid enough to mess with their own bodies, but when they bring it into a competition or sporting event, it makes me angry.  What right do they have to cheat and steal from the people who are really working hard to achieve their lifetime dream?

 Runners have been one of the most notorious drug abusers over the years, and I am not just talking about Olympic level runners, but National and even recreational level. Their drug of choice? EPO. Mild mannered little "Susie" probably does all sorts of drugs so she can run so far and so fast, and no one even guesses.

Here is an article I found particularly interesting that just shows how cheaters will continue to do whatever they can to get what they want.

By EDDIE PELLS, AP National Writer Eddie Pells, Ap National Writer Wed Sep 22, 1:22 pm ET
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – A drug that mimics EPO as a way to help patients with kidney problems is in the late stages of development, one in an long list of new pharmaceuticals that anti-doping authorities are monitoring as they struggle to keep sports clean.

The drug, called Hematide, is in Stage 3 development, meaning it could be on the market by 2012. Anti-doping authorities say there's a chance some version of the blood-boosting drug could already be available on the black market.
"It speaks to the length people will go to try to cheat," said Larry Bowers, the lead scientist at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. "You get drugs with perfectly beneficial health purposes and it gets diverted for use by people who shouldn't be doing it."

Almost every drug on the World Anti-Doping Agency's banned list, including human growth hormone and steroids, have legitimate medical purposes.
Hematide's arrival is the latest development in a long-running cat-and-mouse game between the drug police and the athletes who find ways to use drugs to improve their performance. Cases involving track athletes Marion Jones, baseball players Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens and an investigation into seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong have centered around whether they used human growth hormone, EPO or designer steroids, all of which have proven more difficult to detect than traditional steroids.
EPO (short for erythropoietin) is a hormone that boosts the body's production of red blood cells, which carry oxygen — and more oxygen helps athletes perform better, particularly endurance athletes in sports like cross-country skiing and cycling. In 1989, the Food and Drug Administration approved EPO for legitimate medical purposes, mainly to treat anemic conditions in patients with kidney diseases and cancer.

Before Hematide, the most significant development in the line of EPO products was CERA, a version of EPO that stays in the blood for longer periods of time. There was no test available for CERA at the Beijing Olympics, but the International Olympic Committee holds onto doping samples for eight years so it can analyze them later if new testing methods become available.

Using a new test in 2009 is how the IOC retroactively caught five Beijing Olympians for using CERA. This year, the IOC said it was retesting some samples from the 2006 Turin Olympics — strong indicators of how patient anti-doping authorities are willing to be to catch cheaters.

One of the newer drugs on WADA's radar, Hematide essentially does the same thing as EPO — helps produce more red blood cells — but, much like CERA, it stays in the body longer so patients don't have to go through as many treatments.
Still, Hematide is not EPO, and so it must be detected using different methods than were used for the original blood booster. Anti-doping authorities are strategically vague when talking about whether a test is already in place for developing drugs, not wanting drug cheats to know what solutions have been found or perfected. At an anti-doping conference last year, WADA said it was studying a new method that would allow wider testing of EPO.

And in yet another attempt to counter possible new EPO-like substances — as well as all other developing drugs that haven't hit the market yet — WADA recently added a category of "non-approved substances" that covers developing products that are not included in other sections of the list and not yet approved for use.

Hematide, however, is already specifically named on the banned list, said Gary Wadler who leads the WADA committee that determines the banned-substances list.

Earlier this year, WADA signed an agreement with a group representing pharmaceutical companies that gets the companies to voluntarily share information with drug police when they're developing new products. It was considered a breakthrough, giving anti-doping authorities a window into what's out there. In return, WADA has to agree not to share proprietary information between competing companies.

"The mission is to be good citizens here," said Anne-Marie Duliege, chief medical officer at Affymax, the company developing Hematide. "We clear it with the professional agencies who know how to do this. The idea is not to replace WADA. We're just delighted to work with WADA, so they can see what's out there and what they might need to prevent down the road."

It's too early to tell how big a factor Hematide

"We work with the people involved with it. It's not like it came out of nowhere," Wadler said. "We all follow the literature on what's being developed. Something like this does not surprise you at all."