Analytical Approaches in Human Sports Drug Testing: Recent Advances, Challenges, and Solutions

Do dried blood spots (DBS) have the potential to support result management processes in routine sports drug testing?

“…On the one hand, the approach of employing urinary reporting levels and decision limits has offered substantial practicality and harmonization at both laboratory and result managing authority (RMA) level; on the other hand, individualized case management cannot be guaranteed, 4 and differing drug potencies and, consequently, pharmacologically relevant blood concentrations and corresponding urinary levels are not fully accounted for. Information complementing the urine sample analytical data are desirable that support and particularize the decision‐making process by the RMA, ideally by either verifying or falsifying the presence of pharmacologically relevant blood levels of a prohibited substance in an athlete's sample collected in−/post‐competition 5 .…”

Annual banned‐substance review – Analytical approaches in human sports drug testing

“…The accomplished analytical sensitivities in routine doping controls are of particular importance when considering the desirable retrospectivity of sample analyses. Detection limits as reported above can, however, also result in AAFs when contaminated products are consumed as reported in the past, especially in the case of diuretics such as hydrochlorothiazide . In that context, Favretto et al discussed a case of contaminated dietary supplements that were obtained from a compounding pharmacy and used by an athlete, whose doping control samples returned two AAFs for hydrochlorothiazide at concentrations below 10 ng/mL .…”

Improved Synthesis and Determination of the Biologically Active Diastereomer of YK11

“…ARE-luciferase reporter assay in HEK293 cells suggested that the active constituent of YK11 was 2a. Although YK11 is sold via the internet as an anabolic steroid, it is an experimental drug candidate and a non-approved substance for humans [10][11][12]. It should be noted that YK11 has not been studied in humans or even animals.…”