Anabolic Steroids And Drug Testing (part 1)
Mick Hart
Virtually all competitive sports involve drug testing in many of their events. In most cases, although some may argue this point, it is a fact that the vast majority of the competitors have been using, or are still using at the point of the competition, performance enhancing drugs. It is simply human nature in a highly competitive athlete to find an 'edge' over his or her competition, and this often comes in pharmaceutical form, coupled with a plan of action to 'beat the test'.
Many competitions in powerlifting and bodybuilding are now drug tested at events. The idea is, of course, that everybody competes on a 'level field', aside from personal talent for sport. However, what frequently happens is that the guy who is on 'juice' and has found a way to get round the drug test comes out the winner. It isn't fair by any means, but that's life.
Yes, there are many sporting names out there that find this practise an unfair advantage, but at the end of the day it's down to the individual, who knows what the consequences are if he gets found to be positive during a competition. Another interesting part of drug testing is how people avoid the test, but for the moment we are going to concentrate on methods that can be employed to beat the test.
Types of Testing Procedure: When it comes to the tests carried out at sporting events, it is generally the urine which is put to the test for the presence of drugs. This type of testing is what we will be looking into although blood testing isn't that much different, when testing for illegal substances.
Different laboratory testing processes are employed in the testing for performance enhancers so we are going to focus on just how they work in order to be able to beat them. Step 1 will be well prior to your event, that you find out which type of sample analysis is to be employed so that an effective planning to beat the test can begin as soon as possible.
Gas Chromatography(GC): This method uses a separation technique to divide a urine extract into its component chemical parts. These substances are carried through chromatographic columns by a gas: chromatography is simply a means of separating mixtures of compounds from each other, and enables identification in many cases. The chemical compounds in the urine are identified by their 'retention time' on the chromatographic column - the retention time is unique for each drug, and so enables identification.
Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry(GC/MS): This specific test will use a mixture of gas chromatography, followed up by mass spectrometry on the chemicals that have been separated from the urine on the chromatographic column. The mass spectrometry will reveal the exact identification of any drugs which are found present in the urine by actually producing an perfect 'molecular fingerprint' match of any chemicals that are found present. Meaning that the chemical structure of the drugs that are present (the atoms present within the drug, and in the order they are actually bonded together) results by putting this method to use. "Unfortunately" this test is just too expensive to use and just the well off sporting associations can afford to use it. The test of this cost is on average about one hundred pounds per sample (almost $200 US).
It goes without saying that we have just covered two pretty reasonably accurate tests, but you can always expect a certain degree of human error. One of the most common would be that of poor cleaning after testing, whereby contamination could lead to the next person to be tested to get an incorrect result. So bearing this in mind should you ever come out positive when you think you shouldn't have, well make sure you put in a protest.
High Performance Liquid Chromatography(HPLC): A further technique that is of interest as it is often used on test samples which are suspected of containing steroids. It's very similar to GC, apart from that a the carrier is a liquid for the sample through a chromatographic column instead of a gas. HPLC is both sensitive and easier to perform than GC. It is generally used to check up on results from other tests that are not quite so sensitive.
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