Exclusive News From ARD German TV News Programme: New Methods for Detecting Anabolic Steroids Lead to Hundreds of Positive Doping Tests
Grigory Rodchenko, head of the Mosow control laboratory, who tracked down Oral-Turinabol, the drug of choice in the GDR, told the ARD editorial staff working on doping:
"With this detection method, 100 urine samples have now tested positive that would previously have turned up negative."
Rodchenko estimates the detection window for identifying the substance after it has been administered now to be six months or more, thus significantly longer than before. This is also true of the substance stanozolol, which has already been discovered in well over 100 urine samples at the Cologne laboratory thanks to the improved detection method
IOC to act after new testing methods reveal hundreds of positive results
Drug Test Anal. 2013 Nov-Dec;5(11-12):810-8. doi: 10.1002/dta.1516. Epub 2013 Jul 19.
Expanding analytical possibilities concerning the detection of stanozolol misuse by means of high resolution/high accuracy mass spectrometric detection of stanozolol glucuronides in human sports drug testing.
Schänzer W1, Guddat S, Thomas A, Opfermann G, Geyer H, Thevis M.
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Abstract
Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) represent one of the most frequently detected classes of prohibited substances in doping controls. Due to their long-lasting beneficial effects on athletic performance, utmost retrospectivity via urine analysis is desirable and accomplished by targeting long-term metabolites of the respective drugs. In case of stanozolol, a substantial variety of metabolites has enabled the identification of numerous adverse analytical findings in the past, and recent studies concerning complementary phase-I and phase-II metabolites has further expanded the windows of opportunity for detecting the abuse of stanozolol. In this study, the utility of liquid chromatography-high resolution/high accuracy (tandem) mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) for the detection of 3'-OH-stanozolol glucuronide in sports drug testing is presented and the identification of two additional and so far unreported metabolites is shown. The structures of the complementary glucuronic acid conjugates were attributed to stanozolol-N-glucuronide and 17-epistanozolol-N-glucuronide. By means of chemical synthesis, stanozolol-N-glucuronide was prepared and used to corroborate the suggested structures. The 3'-OH-stanozolol glucuronide and the newly identified target compounds were implemented into routine sports drug test assays consisting of direct injection LC-MS/MS or solid-phase extraction (SPE) followed by LC-MS/MS. A considerably expanded detection window for stanozolol abuse was demonstrated compared to the use of conventional phase-I metabolites and methodologies based on, for example, low resolution LC-MS/MS or gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS). The commercial availability of 3'-OH-stanozolol glucuronide has been of great value for confirmatory purposes, and 17-epistanozolol-N-glucuronide was found to be a favourable long-term metabolite for doping controls as it was observed up to 28 days post-administration of the drug.
Applying the established methodology over a period of six months to 659 routine sports drug testing samples, a total of 85 adverse analytical findings was uncovered, 72 of which would have remained undetected using earlier employed GC-MS/MS approaches.
J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol. 2012 Feb;128(3-5):121-7. doi: 10.1016/j.jsbmb.2011.11.004. Epub 2011 Nov 27.
Detection and mass spectrometric characterization of novel long-term dehydrochloromethyltestosterone metabolites in human urine.
Sobolevsky T1, Rodchenkov G.
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Abstract
The biotransformation of dehydrochloromethyltestosterone (DHCMT, 4-chloro-17β-hydroxy,17α-methylandrosta-1,4-dien-3-one) in man was studied with the aim to discover long-term metabolites valuable for the antidoping analysis. Having applied a high performance liquid chromatography for the fractionation of urinary extract obtained from the pool of several DHCMT positive urines, about 50 metabolites were found. Most of these metabolites were included in the GC-MS/MS screening method, which was subsequently applied to analyze the post-administration and routine doping control samples. As a result of this study, 6 new long-term metabolites were identified tentatively characterized using GC-MS and GC-MS/MS as 4-chloro-17α-methyl-5β-androstan-3α,16,17β-triol (M1), 4-chloro-18-nor-17β-hydroxymethyl,17α-methyl-5β-androsta-1,13-dien-3α-ol (M2), 4-chloro-18-nor-17β-hydroxymethyl,17α-methyl-5β-androst-13-en-3α-ol (M3), its epimer 4-chloro-18-nor-17α-hydroxymethyl,17β-methyl-5β-androst-13-en-3α-ol, 4-chloro-18-nor-17β-hydroxymethyl,17α-methylandrosta-4,13-dien-3α-ol (M4) and its epimer 4-chloro-18-nor-17α-hydroxymethyl,17β-methylandrosta-4,13-dien-3α-ol. The most long-term metabolite M3 was shown to be superior in the majority of cases to the other known DHCMT metabolites, such as 4-chloro-18-nor-17β-hydroxymethyl,17α-methylandrosta-1,4,13-trien-3-one and 4-chloro-3α,6β,17β-trihydroxy-17α-methyl-5β-androst-1-en-16-one
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