Blood Doping
My cocktail so to speak was EPO, but not a lot, transfusions and testosterone - Lance Armstrong
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What Is Blood Doping?
“Blood doping” refers to any illicit method of boosting an athlete’s red blood-cell supply in advance of competition. The typical adult male’s hematocrit—the percentage of his blood that is composed of red blood cells—hovers around 45. Since red blood cells carry oxygen through the bloodstream, increasing the number of them allows an athlete’s blood to deliver oxygen to muscles more efficiently, reducing fatigue and giving the athlete an edge.
Athletes can get a bigger—and illegal—boost by injecting themselves with erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone that stimulates RBC production. A urine test for artificial EPO was introduced in 1997, but it’s not foolproof; while testable traces of…
Articles of Interest
Blood doping: what is it and has anyone died as a result of it?
Blood doping is the use of certain techniques or substances to increase the mass of red blood cells and therefore haemoglobin in the body. This allows the body to transport more oxygen to muscles and so increase stamina and performance, making it particularly effective for endurance events. There are three widely known substances or methods used for blood doping: injections of erythropoietin (EPO), synthetic oxygen carriers and blood transfusions.
New Finding Could Unmask Blood Doping in Athletes
RNA changes mark old blood cells among new ones, foiling self-transfusions.
Blood Doping Goes Back to the Future
High-tech performance enhancers are easy to detect. Not so with the original doping strategy: reinjecting your own blood.
It can kill, but blood doping is in vogue again
Along with the use of ether, toad venom, growth hormone taken from corpses and avoiding drug tests by introducing clean urine into the bladder by catheter, blood doping does not sound like one of the more salubrious ways of enhancing performance. Unlike many other practices, however, it does have sound physiological reasoning behind it. What it provides is a relatively simple means of enhancing an athlete's endurance by increasing the amount of oxygen-carrying red cells in the blood stream.
Lance Armstrong Admits Using EPO and Blood Doping to Oprah Winfrey
Lance Armstrong sat down with Oprah Winfrey and admitted using testosterone and EPO and to performing blood transfusions during the height of his career as a pro cyclist.
The evolving science of detection of ‘blood doping’
Yet another reason for blood doping to be a popular illicit practice is that detection is difficult. For autologous blood transfusions, for example, no direct test exists, and the direct testing of misuse with recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEpo) has proven very difficult despite a test exists. Future blood doping practice will likely include the stabilization of the transcription factor hypoxia-inducible factor which leads to an increased endogenous erythropoietin synthesis.
The science of doping and how cheating athletes pass drug tests
Another common method of doping is the use of recombinant human erythropoietin (rHuEPO), which stimulates the production of red blood cells. Erythropoietin (EPO) is a naturally occurring hormone found in the blood; recombinant EPO is the artificial version.
The Top Athletes Looking for an Edge and the Scientists Trying to Stop Them
Behind the scenes there will be a high-tech, high-stakes competition between Olympic athletes who use banned substances and drug testers out to catch them.
The world’s top anti-doping scientist thinks we can end cheating in sports. Here’s why.
The world’s top anti-doping scientist thinks we can end cheating in sports. Here’s why.
Why is doping wrong anyway?
If it’s wrong to enhance your performance by doping, why is it not also wrong to enhance your performance by taking dietary supplements, for instance, or carb-loading, or by training at altitude?
