How doping is detected in athletes

• April 20, 2024

The doping It has been a recurring theme for several years now, mainly when international sports are held. But what is doping? What substances produce it? and how is it detected? To know where to start, it is necessary to define this term and some of its characteristics.

Doping

The doping or doping, is the consumption of substances or products and use of methods with the purpose of increasing or improving, in a non-natural and provisional way, the performance of the individual. This term is used especially in the sports field, where its definition must add the characteristic of "illicit "To the products consumed and the methods used. Due to the increasing degree of competitiveness and the frequency of high level competitions, doping has become one of its biggest blunders. The use of doping substances is dangerous for the health of athletes and violates the most elementary rules of ethics sporty. For this reason, many national and international organizations have taken preventive measures to avoid it, such as the creation of lists of prohibited products. However, the content of these varies according to the countries, the federations and the instances of each sport that writes them. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been in charge of establishing general regulations and categories of common doping products.

Doping detection method

The analysis of urine is the main institutional method of control anti-doping to reveal and, where appropriate, sanction the presence of doping substances in athletes. It has been shown to be effective in the detection of exogenous substances that the human body is not able to synthesize, as most of the stimulants , narcotics , steroids , anabolic Y diuretics . However, the urinalysis does not require the dosage of the endogenous substances and is totally ineffective in doping carried out by autotransfusion of blood. The classification of the IOC allows the limited use of current substances (such as caffeine, alcohol, certain anesthetics or anti-inflammatories), which also implies doping if the athlete exceeds the threshold of permitted use. Due to increasingly frequent anti-doping controls, doping athletes prefer to use hormonal products (corticoids , steroids , testosterone or dihydrotestosterone ), already existing in the body and whose concentration is difficult to quantify in the analysis. Faced with the increasing use of products and the number of doping methods in high-level sports, governments organize prevention campaigns aimed at federations and young athletes, informing them of the physical dangers and the increasingly severe sanctions imposed on them. that are exposed. In addition, in the competitions the controls have been systematized, which can even be carried out without prior notice.

Dopant substances

There are different types of substances and methods of doping. The list of forbidden substances It includes stimulants, narcotics, anabolic steroids, diuretics and peptide hormones and glycoproteins. Prohibited methods are blood or transfusion doping (reinjection of blood, previously extracted to the athlete before exertion, in order to increase the production of red blood cells, which fix oxygen, and thus improve their resistance), and pharmacological manipulations , chemical and physical, among them the taking of diuretics or other products that camouflage in the urine the residues of the doping molecules taken. Restricted substances, such as alcohol, marijuana, local anesthetics, corticosteroids and beta-blockers, are on a long list.