Abstract
A narrative review with an overall aim of indicating the current state of knowledge and the relevance concerning food and supplement contamination and/or adulteration with doping agents and the respective implications for sports drug testing is presented. The identification of a doping agent (or its metabolite) in sports drug testing samples constitutes a violation of the anti-doping rules defined by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Reasons for such Adverse Analytical Findings (AAFs) include the intentional misuse of performance-enhancing/banned drugs; however, also the scenario of inadvertent administrations of doping agents was proven in the past, caused by, amongst others, the ingestion of contaminated dietary supplements, drugs, or food. Even though controversial positions concerning the effectiveness of dietary supplements in healthy subjects exist, they are frequently used by athletes, anticipating positive effects on health, recovery, and performance. However, most supplement users are unaware of the fact that the administration of such products can be associated with unforeseeable health risks and AAFs in sports. In particular anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) and stimulants have been frequently found as undeclared ingredients of dietary supplements, either as a result of cross-contaminations due to substandard manufacturing practices and missing quality controls or an intentional admixture to increase the effectiveness of the preparations. Cross-contaminations were also found to affect therapeutic drug preparations. While the sensitivity of assays employed to test pharmaceuticals for impurities is in accordance with good manufacturing practice guidelines allowing to exclude any physiological effects, minute trace amounts of contaminating compounds can still result in positive doping tests. In addition, food was found to be a potential source of unintentional doping, the most prominent example being meat tainted with the anabolic agent clenbuterol. The athletes’ compliance with anti-doping rules is frequently tested by routine doping controls. Different measures including offers of topical information and education of the athletes as well as the maintenance of databases summarizing low- or high-risk supplements are important cornerstones in preventing unintentional anti-doping rule violations. Further, the collection of additional analytical data has been shown to allow for supporting result management processes.
Highlights
According to the World Anti-Doping Code (WADC), doping is defined as a violation of theAnti-Doping Rules [1], comprising, inter alia, the detection of a prohibited substance, its metabolites, or markers in the blood or urine sample of an athlete
Contaminations of Drugs and Medical Preparations. Both pharmaceuticals and food are usually tested for the presence of contaminations and impurities at the part per million level, which is sufficient to prevent any pharmacological effects, but it cannot rule out entirely implications for sports drug testing [34]
The metabolite could be confirmed in two samples collected 4–6 h post-administration. These findings demonstrate that contaminated poultry can cause Analytical Findings (AAFs) in sports, the respective athlete was still sanctioned as this scenario appeared very unlikely in his case
Summary
According to the World Anti-Doping Code (WADC), doping is defined as a violation of the. There are different scenarios where such an Adverse Analytical Finding (AAF) does not necessarily result from a deliberate application of a performance-enhancing/banned drug (vide infra) Such cases of inadvertent doping include the. Analytical approaches employed in anti-doping research and routine analysis concerning the presented investigations into presumed contamination scenarios are exclusively based on chromatographic-mass spectrometric methods, offering specificity and sensitivity for conclusive result interpretation. The discussion includes both theoretical and contextual points of view, with an overall aim of indicating the current state of knowledge and the relevance and need for future research into specific areas
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