Monday, July 23, 2012
Athletic Biological Passport
It is always great to see
an athlete succeed. Whether it is breaking a world record or winning for the
tenth time in a row, we all cheer for their success. However, performance-enhancing
drugs (PEDs) have tarnished some of these successes and the athletes themselves.
To prevent this issue, athletes are directly tested for PEDs (i.e. anabolic
steroids) in their bodies, through either blood or urine. However, advances in
pharmacology have made it much easier to produce new PEDs every year and more
difficult to detect in tests, so a new method has been introduced-The Athletic
Biological Passport.
The Athletic Biological Passport
is a new way to detect use of PEDs through multiple and reoccurring measurements
of certain “biomarkers” in an athlete, rather than the substances directly. These
biomarkers are physiological levels in an athlete (i.e. number of red-blood
cells or hemoglobin) that are affected by PEDs even long after the drugs have
left the body. Using this method makes sense because these levels are relatively
constant among athletes, rather than the increasing variety of PEDs that they
could potentially be taking.
Here are two examples of
what an actual biological passport would look like in two different athletes:
These are four different measurements of various
biomarkers, which I boxed in red. The red lines represent the parameters for
which the test is set and the blue line is the actual value the athlete
produced throughout the nine different testing occurrences (the x-axis). The
colored bar is just the measured probability that these test results are
physiologically abnormal. Because these values of this particular athlete are
within the parameters, it can be concluded that they are not taking any PEDs.
However, this biological passport shows many
abnormalities in the different test, which can be inferred that this athlete
did not achieve these values under normal physiological conditions.
What
began primarily in the cycling community, biological passports are quickly
gaining acceptance in many other areas. This year will mark the first time
biological passports will be used in the Olympic games and has actually caused
a few athletes to be disqualified
from them already. For more information, please check out the papers below.
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1 comment:
I actually remember my professor briefly mentioning Biological Passport research in exercise physiology class recently. I am currently in school to become a PT Assistant.
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