Current testosterone doping tests should be scrapped for international sport, because they ignore vital ethnic differences in hormone activity, according to new research from Switzerland.
Testosterone, and other hormones that boost testosterone levels, are among the most widely abused performance enhancers used in sport, according to the World Anti-Doping Agency. Evidence of abuse is determined by the testosterone to epitestosterone ratio, or T:E ratio, in the urine.
Researchers tested the steroid profiles of football players of different ethnicities, after they had deliberately added steroid to their urine samples. They used gas chromatography and took account of a variation in the UGT2B17 gene.
Previous research has indicated that variations in this gene account for some of the differences in the urinary T:E ratio between men of white and Asian ethnic backgrounds. The gene affects metabolism, and therefore the rate at which testosterone is passed out of the body into the urine. They included 57 men of Black African origin, 32 of Asian origin, 32 of Hispanic origin and 50 of Caucasian origin. All were aged between 18 and 36.
The results revealed the genetic variation in 22 per cent of the Africans, 81 per cent of the Asians, 10 per cent of the Caucasians, and 7 per cent of the Hispanics. Based on these findings, the Swiss researchers recalibrated the thresholds for each ethnic group.
The new T:E ratios were: 5.6 for men of African origin, 5.7 for white men and 5.8 for men of Hispanic origin. For men of Asian origin, the ratio was 3.8.
A single indiscriminate threshold to pick up steroid abuse in international sport is ‘not fit for purpose’, the study’s authors concluded. Instead, the reference ranges should be tailored to an athlete’s individual endocrinological passport. Such a passport ‘may detect modifications induced by abuse of testosterone and its precursors, but also alterations in the steroid profile caused by indirect androgen doping products’.
Online First edition of British Journal of Sports Medicine, available at:
http://press.psprings.co.uk/bjsm/march/sm56242.pdf
About Gary Culliton
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