Athletes who want to cheat by injecting themselves with a performance-enhancing drug that boosts their blood cell count can do so with little risk of getting caught, a new study indicates.
A urine test that is supposed to detect the drug, and that will be used in the Tour de France next month and in the Olympics in August, is likely to miss it, the study shows.
The substance, recombinant human erythropoietin, known as EPO, stimulates bone marrow to speed up production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. And with more blood cells, endurance athletes, such as cyclists and distance runners, can perform better.
EPO is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, an international group hoping to stop doping in sports and whose program is followed by the International Olympic Committee. The agency defends its EPO test and questioned the latest study.
Although athletes have said EPO is in widespread use, few have tested positive. In the August 2006 issue of the journal Blood, the American lab accredited to conduct EPO testing reported only nine positive tests out of 2,600 urine samples. The new study might help explain why -- the test simply failed.
The study, to be published today in the online edition of the Journal of Applied Physiology, was conducted last summer and fall by a renowned lab in Denmark, the Copenhagen Muscle Research Center. The investigators gave eight young men EPO and collected urine samples on multiple occasions before, during and after they were doping. The men's urine samples were then sent to two labs accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency, and EPO tests were requested.
The labs could not agree, and under the anti-doping agency's rules none of the subjects would have been charged with using EPO, even though their red blood cell counts rose and their performance on an endurance test improved.
The findings in the latest study should be no surprise, said Charles E. Yesalis, a professor of sports science at Penn State. For decades, he said, anti-doping authorities have claimed they have tests that work and for decades athletes have been taking drugs without getting caught.
