Peptide hormones abuse in sport: State of the art in the detection of growth hormone and erythropoietin.

Peptide hormones have been abused in sports to improve physical performance s since recombinant products which are the exact replicate of their natural models became available. Both human growth hormone and erythropoietin are now available in large quantities on the unofficial market for those who wa nt to use them for applications lying outside the accepted medical applicat ions. Such abuse calls for strict controls, because non-medical abuses of t hese powerful products can produce dangerous side-effects. The duration tim e of both peptides in the body is so short that direct detection of the rec ombinant products is impossible. The actual tests available for their detec tion rely on immunological assays which are not considered good enough for determining their abuse in sports. All possible secondary markers are now b eing sought for adoption as a screening test which still requires confirmat ion by the direct measurement of the hormones themselves. Blood samples mig ht well appear to be more useful for the comparison of quantitative data ob tained from carefully selected secondary markers of the abuse of these drug s although large population studies on their variations are not yet accompl ished. The final proof of the abuse of such products is sought through the use of the newest analytical techniques like Liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. The state of the art in this field is analysed in v iew of the specific problems that any doping control laboratory is faced wi th, including the ethical and legal requirements.