Performance Enhancing Hormone Doping in Sport

Review
In: Endotext [Internet]. South Dartmouth (MA): MDText.com, Inc.; 2000.
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Excerpt

Sport is the organized playing of competitive games according to rules. Hence doping represent drug cheating, a fraud on competitors, the sport, and the public. The charter of the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) forms a harmonized Code that authorizes an annually updated list of prohibited doping substances and methods as well as accrediting national anti-doping labs around the world. Sports performance has 4 major components: skill, strength, endurance, and recovery, with each sport employing a distinct combination of these elements. These performance characteristics also correspond to the most potent and effective forms of doping. Sports requiring explosive power are most susceptible to androgen doping through their effect on increasing muscle mass and strength whereas sports that require endurance are most enhanced by hemoglobin (blood) doping which increases oxygen delivering capacity to exercising tissues. Performance in contact sports and those involving intense physical activity or training may also be enhanced by growth hormone and its secretagogues through speeding of tissue recovery from injury. Hormones remain the most potent and widely detected doping agents being responsible for about 2/3 of anti-doping rule violations detected by increasingly sophisticated detection methods. At present, the vast majority of positives are still due to a wide variety of androgens, including marketed and illicit nutraceutical, designer, specific androgen receptor modulator (SARM)) synthetic androgens as well as exogenous natural androgens, while the peptide hormones (erythropoiesis stimulating agents, growth hormone and its secretagogues) and autologous blood transfusion remain difficult to detect. For complete coverage of all related areas of Endocrinology, please visit our on-line FREE web-text, WWW.ENDOTEXT.ORG.

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