Drugs in sports: Analytical trends

A minority of athletes continues to use prohibited drugs in sports to enhan ce performance. Athletes discovered using these drugs can be subject to sev ere penalties, often resulting in media and public scrutiny, especially at major events such as the Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has set out the classes of the substances it bans in the IOC Medical Code. In many cases "old" drugs such as anabolic steroids are still used, and current testing regimes can test for these. Advances in the therapeutic treatment of illness have resulted in new drugs or practices, many of whic h are difficult to detect and which have been turned to the sinister role o f performance enhancement. Detection of some newly developed drugs which ha ve been placed on the banned list offers a major challenge to laboratories involved in sports dope testing. In some cases this requires research into new applications of research techniques. These techniques involve the novel use of gas chromatogaphy/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) techniques, high-resolu tion mass spectrometry (HRMS), carbon isotope ratio mass spectrometry, and immunoassay techniques.