Unless you are a chemist or an anti-doping official, the chances are that you won’t have heard of ostarine. Neither had Jimmy Wallhead, a Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighter based in Loughborough, UK. Yet he was sanctioned with a nine month ban after a supplement he had used was found to contain the substance.
Ostarine is classed as an anabolic agent by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which reported a low 28 adverse analytical findings (AAFs) across sport in its 2016 Testing Figures Report (competed to 294 for stanozolol, for example). It is a Selective Androgen Receptor Modulator (SARM) developed as Enobosarm by pharmaceutical company GTX to treat conditions involving muscle wastage or osteoporosis. As such, it is designed to target the androgen receptors in the body, so that selected tissues respond as they would to testosterone, without the side effects.
The key point to note is that Enobosarm, or ostarine, was developed by GTX as an investigational drug, and has not been approved for use in any country. So why are so many athletes testing positive for it?
‘In recent years, WADA has reported an increasing number of positive tests involving SARMs, and athletes who use these substances most likely obtain them through black market channels’, reads athlete advice from the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) issued in July last year. ‘There are in fact products that contain ostarine, but only illegal ones. Given that ostarine is not approved for human use or consumption in the U.S., or in any other country, there are no legal medications that contain ostarine.’
However, recently, USADA has changed its tune. It appears that there is evidence that ostarine is increasingly turning up in supplements. There are currently 60 products on USADA’s High Risk List (supplement411) that contain ostarine. In July last year, there were just 36.
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