Doping with naturally occurring steroids

Abstract

The current definition of doping involves the restriction of the use of naturally occurring compounds The typical examples of such dope agents are testosterone and the related steroid hormones.1) One difficulty of dope analysis stems from the origin of the dope agents As the detection of synthetic anabolic steroids became relatively easy, and since there was no procedure available that could differentiate exogenous natural hormones, testosterone and its esters became a popular substitute for steroid abusers. Testosterone is the worst of the popular anabolic steroids that are abused by sportsmen, according to the laboratory statistics of 1995 issued by the Medical Commission of the International Olympic Committee (MC-IOC).Recent incidents in sport also involve doping cases with other testosterone-related compounds Doping test results from the Asian Games in Hiroshima, 1994, involved 16 positive cases of 5α-dihydrotestosterone (DHT) and the results proved its abuse by world class athletes.2)Some natural steroid hormone precursors, e.g. dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), androstenedione and pregnenolone, appeared on the US market as memory-enhancing dietary supplements and have recently become available on the Internet without a medical doctor's prescription. They seemed to be less toxic and less anabolic than the fully formed androgens. However, the use of these steroids in sports is also regarded as doping in terms of the paragraph with the doping definition, “Anabolic steroids… and related compounds”.1) DHEA has then been included in the MC-IOC's banned drug list of 1997.This chapter describes the strategy of the Olympic laboratories against doping with naturally occurring steroids. The results of steroid tests at the XVIIth. Winter Olympic Games Nagano 1998 will be briefly discussed.