Drug Abuse In Sports Research Articles

Drug abuse in sports: A curse of health sciences

Drug abuse in sports: A curse of health sciences

In Memoriam Joseph Cummiskey, MD, Prof. 1945–2018

In Memoriam Joseph Cummiskey, MD, Prof. 1945–2018

Cardiovascular Effects of Performance-Enhancing Drugs.

Exercise and competitive sports should be associated with a wide range of health benefits with the potential to inspire a positive community health legacy. However, the reputation of sports is being threatened by an ever-expanding armamentarium of agents with real or perceived benefits in performance enhancement. In addition to the injustice of unfair advantage for dishonest athletes, significant potential health risks are associated with performance-enhancing drugs. Performance-enhancing drugs may have an effect on the cardiovascular system by means of directly altering the myocardium, vasculature, and metabolism. However, less frequently considered is the potential for indirect effects caused through enabling athletes to push beyond normal physiological limits with the potential consequence of exercise-induced arrhythmias. This review will summarize the known health effects of PEDs but will also focus on the potentially greater health threat posed by the covert search for performance-enhancing agents that have yet to be recognized by the World Anti-Doping Agency. History has taught us that athletes are subjected to unmonitored trials with experimental drugs that have little or no established efficacy or safety data. One approach to decrease drug abuse in sports would be to accept that there is a delay from when athletes start experimenting with novel agents to the time when authorities become aware of these drugs. This provides a window of opportunity for athletes to exploit with relative immunity. It could be argued that all off-label use of any agent should be deemed illegal.

Drug abuse in sports and doping

Drug is defined as a substance that alters the physiological processes of the body which is used for the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of disease. Abuse denotes injudicious or irrational application. The use of performance-enhancing drugs is probably the major problem facing sport today. Despite intense efforts by sporting bodies and the medical professionals to eliminate the problem, drug taking to enhance sport performance remains widespread. No player should gain an unfair advantage over other players by using an unethical substance or method. The use of drugs may also be extremely dangerous to the health of players. Drug testing programs have been established by amateur and professional sports authorities to promote a safe and fair competitive environment. Clinicians who treat athletes should be familiar with the commonly abused substances and doping methods DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bmj.v43i1.21379 Bangladesh Med J. 2014 January; 43 (1): 46-50

P-62 * THE DIFFERENCE OF ATTITUDE TOWARD DOPING BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN IN JAPAN

Object. Drug abuse, most notably anabolic-androgenic steroid (AAS) use, in athletes is thought to be widespread. A few drug abusers and persons who express acceptance of drug abuse in sports are known to be present in Japan as well. We investigated the state of drug abuse and attitudes toward drug abuse in sports in a Japanese physical education university from the viewpoint of anti-doping. We report the difference of the attitude toward doping between men and women in Japan this time. Methods. The study sample was comprised of students attending a physical educational uni/versity in Japan. An anonymous self-completed questionnaire was given out in two classes at the beginning of the semester in 2012. The questionnaire had 5 sections covering responder's drug use, attitudes toward doping, a hypothetical situation on an athlete's drug use, dietary supplements, and what the responder eats or drinks before playing a game. The difference between men and women to each answer was analyzed by non-parametric test (Friedmann test or χ2 test). Results. The response rate for the 2011 questionnaire was 100%. There were 2 admitted drug abusers in men and 1 in women. In Section II, which included a question on what the responder thought of doping, 19% in men and 15% in women selected good. There is no statistic difference between men and women. Section III presented a hypothetical situation whereby the respondent would use a drug undetectable by doping control, win a gold medal and have a lifespan of only 5 years thereafter. In answer to the question of whether the respondent would use the drug under those conditions, 19.6% in men and 6.1% in. women However there is no statistic difference between men and women. Conclusions. The statistic differences of the attitude toward doping between men and women were not recognized. It is necessary to continue this survey for some years and check whether these results do not change.

Drug Abuse in Sports: An Overview

ABSTRACT The use of drugs to enhance performance in sports is termed as doping and is prevalent since ancient times. In India, the trigger to setup facility for the testing of banned substances was the first positive of an Indian weight lifter in 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games. The Indian laboratory got ISO/IEC 17025: 1999 accreditation in 2003 and WADA accreditation in 2008. It accomplished testing for the two major international games (1st Singapore Youth Olympics and 19th Commonwealth Games) in 2010 successfully. The evaluation of statistics of sample testing in India revealed the maximum number of positives in bodybuilding, athletics, kabbadi, weightlifting and powerlifting. The most prevalent group of drugs in the banned category was anabolic steroids followed by stimulants and diuretics. The implementation of highest standard of quality control is essential for the doping laboratories to ensure best laboratory practices along with the ongoing research to keep up with the advancements in detection of new substances. The sports persons also need to be more vigilant about the prevalent antidoping rules and regulations. How to cite this article Beotra A. Drug Abuse in Sports: An Overview. J Postgrad Med Edu Res 2013;47(2):94-98.

Investigation of the Attitudes of Japanese Physical Educational University Students toward Doping in Sports

Background: Drug abuse, most notably Anabolic-Androgenic Steroid (AAS) use, in athletes is thought to be widespread. A few drug abusers and persons who express acceptance of drug abuse in sports are known to be present in Japan as well. We investigated the state of drug abuse and attitudes toward drug abuse in sports in a Japanese physical education university from the viewpoint of anti-doping. Methods: The study sample was comprised of students attending a physical educational university in Japan. An anonymous self-completed questionnaire was given out in two classes at the beginning of the semester from 2008 until 2012, inclusive. Results for the year 2011 are given here. The questionnaire had 5 sections covering responder’s drug use, attitudes toward doping, a hypothetical situation on an athlete’s drug use, dietary supplements, and what the responder eats or drinks before playing a game. Results: The response rate for the 2011 questionnaire was 100%. There were 2 admitted drug abusers (0.4%) and 774 (99.6%) non-abusers. The use of diuretics was admitted. In Section II, which included a question on what the responder thought of doping, 144 (19.3%) selected “good” and 592 (79.1%) selected “bad”. Section III presented a hypothetical situation whereby the respondent would use a drug undetectable by doping control, win a gold medal and have a lifespan of only 5 years thereafter. In answer to the question of whether the respondent would use the drug under those conditions, 85 (11.4%) answered “yes” and 655 (87.5%) answered “no”. Conclusions: 20% of the students approved of drug use in sports. Furthermore, based on the response to a question in Section III, it can be speculated that 10% of the students might have used drugs in sports.

Partnering With The Industry: The Olympic Laboratory Model

David A Cowan and Campbell P Barker speak to Ryan De Vooght-Johnson at Bioanalysis in May 2012 about the partnership between industry and academia for the setup and running of the doping-control laboratory for the London 2012 Olympic Games. David A Cowan is Director of the London 2012 anti-doping laboratory as well as Director of the King's College London Drug Control Centre, the UK's only WADA-accredited anti-doping laboratory, and Head of the Department of Forensic Science and Drug Monitoring. Cowan co-founded the Drug Control Centre in 1978 and became its Director in 1990. He has published extensively in the field of pharmaceutical analysis, especially as it relates to detecting drug administration in sport, and was awarded a personal chair in pharmaceutical toxicology in 1996. Cowan became Head of the Department of Forensic Science and Drug Monitoring at King's College London in 2002. He has served on a number of national and international committees, including the Council of Europe Working Party Investigating Drug Abuse in Sport that led to the first World Anti-Doping Convention, the Laboratory Representative on the International Olympic Committee's Medical Commission, and WADA's Laboratory Accreditation Subcommittee. He is a member of the Crippen Club for Distinguished Toxicologists. In 1998 he was awarded the IOC Trophy for Sport Ethics by the BOA. He was a founding member of the World Association of Anti-Doping Scientists and became its first President serving on its Executive Board between 2001 and 2004. He was a Visiting Laboratory Director at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games 2002, where the first novel erythropoiesis-stimulating protein (NESP) positive was discovered. He was also a senior advisory scientist at both the Turin Winter Olympic Games in 2006 and the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. He was also a member of the IOC Medical Commission for the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000 and the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games in 2010. The Drug Control Centre undertook the sample analysis during the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games and Cowan was Co-Director of the laboratory for the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur in 1998. Cowan, who has directed the laboratory at King's College London for many years, was a member of the bid team making the presentation to the International Olympic Committee in February 2005. Campbell P Barker has been leading GlaxoSmithKline's delivery of the London 2012 laboratory services since September 2009. Prior to that time he was Director of Global Strategic Projects in GlaxoSmithKline's Consumer Healthcare business from 2006, and from 1994 to 2006 he worked in R&D for Procter & Gamble. Barker holds a PhD in chemistry from the University of Durham.

Doping: a challenge to the endocrinologist. A reappraisal in view of the Olympic Games of 2004

The aim of this review is to provide an update on drug abuse by athletes, their mode of action and the technical difficulties of detection. The most common doping agents are the anabolic steroids (AS), testosterone derivatives modified to take advantage of the anabolic rather than the androgenic properties of the hormone. However, there are numerous side-effects that discourage their use. Several other substances and hormones, GH and rhEPO are currently used alone or combined to enhance performance. The diversity in nature of the substances used requires a constant alertness of physicians to detect drug abuse in sports. Doping is not limited to the professional athletes. It seems to be a generalized phenomenon that reflects modern society's concept of success. Therefore, the campaign to eradicate doping must also focus on individual responsibility. Since modern-day doping is strongly related to hormonal preparations, endocrinologists may play a pivotal role in providing information, protecting athletes' health and, moreover, retaining the ethical value of sport.

Doping in Sport: Misuse, Analytical Tests, and Legal Aspects

As part of the International Congress of Clinical Chemistry, a symposium, Doping in Sport: Misuse, Analytical Tests, and Legal Aspects, was held, a week before the start of the Olympic Games at Atlanta, bringing together a number of international experts concerned with various aspects of controlling drug abuse in sport. The presentations focused particularly on anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS), these analytes still comprising the greatest number of positive findings in samples tested by International Olympic Committee (IOC)-accredited sports drug-testing laboratories. Although various aspects of AAS use and detection have been reported on in the last decade, the proceedings of this symposium, published in this issue of Clinical Chemistry , bring together health, social, endocrine, and analytical perspectives in a widely read peer-reviewed journal. Those who think that the harmful effects of AAS administration are relatively benign and perhaps should not be banned by the IOC may find particularly sobering the article by Franke and Berendonk (1), which describes the health and social consequences of the clandestine state-sponsored program of administration of AAS in the former East Germany. This article should be extremely useful for educational purposes and, we hope, will encourage some present users to abandon the practice. The mechanism of action of AAS is still not well understood, and the article by Wu (2) is a useful update. Catlin et al. (3) discuss the pertinent issues of detecting AAS administration, in particular of testosterone (T), which is commonly abused. Stenman et al. (4) give a clinical chemistry perspective on the problems of detecting human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) by immunoassay, the protein hormone that may be used by competitors to stimulate testicular production of T. Bowers (5) discusses analytical advances to detect performance-enhancing compounds, particularly with reference to xenobiotic AAS and peptide hormones, such as hCG. But why bother about anabolic …

General practitioner knowledge of prohibited substances in sport.

OBJECTIVES: To assess general practitioner knowledge of banned substances in sport. METHODS: Postal questionnaire sent to all general practitioners in West Sussex. RESULTS: Only 55 (35%) of those who responded...

Fortnightly Review: Drugs in sport

The use of drugs to enhance performance in sport will not go away. Athletes seek every competitive advantage and the rewards of success at top level are great, both financially and in personal glory. Almost all top level competitors are full time and, even if not paid, are to all purposes professional. There is huge pressure to train longer and harder and to take a scientific approach to nutrition and fluid and electrolyte balance, to seek every biomechanical and psychological advantage. It is almost inevitable that some will seek an advantage through drugs. Though there may be little clear objective scientific evidence of a benefit to be gained from drug use, what evidence there is supports the widespread belief among athletes that drugs help. Indeed, many believe that it is impossible to succeed without drugs. Though an athlete's motivation in taking drugs is understandable, we cannot condone it. Firstly, it can be dangerous to the athlete's health and, secondly, it is against all principles of fair competition. A systematic search of the literature is unlikely to tell the complete story in any review of drug abuse in sport. Doping in sport is essentially an underground activity with little formal published research in a topic which should not officially exist. Much of what is common knowledge is cloaked in rumour, suspicion, and suggestion, and the strategies adopted by athletes seem to be founded more on empiricism than published scientific data. The information presented in this review has been identified from several sources. A Medline search from 1966 to 1996 identified 620 references to the term “doping in sports.” With the search restricted to humans (504) and to publications in English there were 389 references. Those references were subclassified into publications identifying side effects, prevalence, methods of detection, and a fourth group …

Testing for drug abuse

On March 25, 1996, the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) finally cleared Diane Modahl, a British athlete, of all charges of testosterone abuse in sport. That decision followed suspension from competition imposed by the British Athletic Federation (BAF) in August, 1994, on the basis of a doping test in Lisbon, Portugal, conducted in June, 1994; a 4-year ban from athletics after a disciplinary hearing in December, 1994; and her successful appeal before an independent panel of BAF in July, 1995. A urine sample from Modahl showed a 40 to 1 excess of testosterone (T) to epitestosterone (E), and this ratio was said to be proof of testosterone administration. A T/E ratio above six constitutes an offence unless there is evidence that this ratio is due to a physiological or pathological condition. BAF and eventually IAAF dismissed the case because experts for Modahl had convinced them that the analysis of a poorly stored sample was unsatisfactory and the conditions had enabled the generation of testosterone by the action of bacteria on steroids in the sample. The laboratory had refused a further test which, in the opinion of IAAF, would show whether that was the case in Modahl’s sample. Modahl is now seeking compensation for the costs of her defence as well as the loss of earnings. The testing procedures for drug abuse in sport are stringent. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) have decided that the tests will require confirmation whenever possible by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, which defines several chemical features of an abused drug. Drug testing in sporting events is designed to detect and deter abuse of performanceenhancing drugs by competitors. Accredited laboratories conduct nearly 100 000 drug tests world wide at an estimated annual cost of £20 million ($30 million). Just as athletes are preparing for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, USA, the IOC requires competitors to agree to a contract which prohibits them taking any action beyond a court of arbitration for sport if they fail a drug test. Outside sport, drug testing has been introduced by various employers and by schools, and has even been entertained among ballroom dancers. The efficiency of these tests is unknown but recent examples of grave injustices resulting from flawed scientific and forensic evidence bring into question other drug-testing procedures. A false-positive result, as in the Modahl case, can have a cruel impact on the life of anyone found guilty and there may be no rights of appeal. What lessons can we learn from the experience of Diane Modahl?

Drug use update

Drug abuse by athletes is a problem not restricted to the elite athlete. Regardless of one's specialty, physicians caring for any athlete or anyone engaged in sport activities must consider drug abuse as an integral part of their patient assessment. To diagnose drug abuse, one must think about drug abuse. The issues are complex. Admittedly it is a sad societal commentary that the physician must entertain the possibility of EPO abuse when evaluating an endurance athlete with a higher than average hematocrit, or think about clenbuterol abuse when a body-builder presents with palpitations, or think of anabolic androgenic steroid abuse when a teenager exhibits an unusual degree of acne. Drug abuse in sports, however, has been and continues to be a reality. The goal of this article was to raise the level of consciousness about the possibility of drug abuse when evaluating and treating athletes regardless of their skill level or record of achievement. History has made it abundantly clear that although drug abuse is not new to sports, the specific drugs of abuse are continuously changing. The physician must be ever mindful.

Cognitive-Behavioral Strategies for Combating Drug Abuse in Sport: Implications for Coaches and Sport Psychology Consultants

Drug abuse in competitive sport continues to be pervasive. Numerous explanations have been given for this and the reasons range from performance enhancement (anabolic steroids) to relieving stress and boredom (so-called recreational drugs). Drug testing, strict policies and enforcement, and educational programs have continued to be the main responses to the problem. However, relatively little attention has been given to preventive rather than punitive and curative strategies, particularly with respect to the coach’s input. This article offers several cognitive and behavioral approaches for coaches and sport psychology consultants in dealing with drug abuse among athletes. The recommendations are based on personal interactions with hundreds of intercollegiate athletes conducted over a 6-year period and from the extant professional literature.

Drug Abuse in Sports: A Three-Pronged Response.

Drug Abuse in Sports: A Three-Pronged Response.

Drug abuse in sports. A physician's view.

Few topics can be expected to provoke more spirited social conversation than sports or drug misuse or abuse. When the talk turns to sports and drugs, even professionals working with athletes are likely to disagree on the best approach to the problem. Dr Ryan, who has broad experience in sports medicine, presents the prevailing viewpoints on drug abuse and misuse by athletes and discusses the reason that an effective method of dealing with this issue has not been developed.

Drug Abuse in Sports: Denial Fuels the Problem.

A young athlete often sees his heroes on the sports pages linked with drugs, yet many authorities deny that drug abuse is a problem. How does this affect drug use by amateur athletes?