Abuse of hormones and related substances in doping, contemporary trends in doping strategies and counterstrategies
Abstract
Aim of doping in sports and games is to increase illegally tolerance to the physical exercise and to enhance the performance. The World Anti-Doping Code and the 2006 Prohibited List is a universal contemporary international standard to fight doping.
Anabolic-androgenic steroids and other hormones are frequently abused by athletes at all levels, as well as by "recreational" drug users. Medical risks of doping abuse may be serious, permanent or fatal in some cases.
Advances in recombinant DNA technology have created proteins which are abused in the current doping arsenal: recombinant human growth hormone (hGH), erythropoietin (EPO), insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) and others. Mechanism of their action is to increase the muscle mass and muscle strength or to increase maximum oxygen consumption capacity by others.
Common strategy is to combine more than one of doping substances and/or to add some prohibited methods of masking their detection. The goal of this article is to summarize the clinically relevant issues regarding hormone abuse in doping, including mechanism of action, adverse events and to describe contemporary methods of doping detection.