Posted on 06/11/2006 10:27:16 PM PDT by neverdem
Jason Grimsley, a pitcher for the Arizona Diamondbacks, was released by the team last week after telling investigators he used illegal performance-enhancing substances, including human growth hormone, to boost muscle mass.
He picked the hormone, a recombinant, or genetically recreated, form of one that is naturally produced by the body, partly because he knew that it is not detectable by Major League Baseball's current tests, which use urine samples.
The hormone can be uncovered in a blood test, which was introduced on a limited basis by the World Anti-Doping Agency at the 2004 Olympics. But amid concerns about the invasiveness of blood testing, Major League Baseball is financing research at the University of California at Los Angeles to create a urine test.
How come there isn't one already?
The arrival of recombinant human hormones forced drug testing labs to change their ways. When drugs were largely synthetic pharmaceuticals, lab testing mainly involved searching urine samples for traces of them. Amphetamines, for example, are not found naturally in the body, making them relatively easy to detect.
But recombinant hormones are very similar to naturally occurring ones, and do not offer obvious molecular fingerprints.
Dr. Gary I. Wadler, a medical professor at New York University who sits on the anti-doping agency committee that drafts its list of banned substances, said that very little growth hormone — about .01 percent — leaves the body in urine.
Testing for these new classes of drugs is usually indirect. Hormones in blood samples can produce specific antigens during laboratory tests, for example. That is how the anti-doping agency looks for illicit growth hormone. Injected hormones can also leave telltale markers in blood.
It is not impossible to find hormones in urine samples. A French lab created such a test for a hormone favored by cyclists because...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
At least he was honest, now he just has to reap what he has sowed.
Too Bad Hippocrates Wasn't an Engineer
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