Blood Doping: Physiology, Pharmacology and Detection Challenges

Symposium — Wednesday, April 26, 2024 — 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM — , Room W196C
Environmental and Exercise Physiology Section — Chair: Larry Bowers — Co-Chair:

  This symposiums goals are to review the current status of blood doping in sports, promote discussion regarding improved detection / deterrence approaches against blood doping, and encourage scientists to apply for available funding to conduct novel anti-doping research from The Partnership for Clean Competition.  Blood doping or artificially increasing an athletes number of red blood cells (RBCs) is an important sports medicine issue and has considerable public and government interest (e.g., Lance Armstrong case). Blood doping is unethical and provides athletes with a powerful ergogenic advantage. Physiological mechanisms responsible for the enhanced athletic performance include increased maximal aerobic power, improved buffering capacity and enhanced thermoregulation. The ergogenic advantage is proportional to the increased number of RBCs (e.g., 10% increase in RBCs elicits a 10% increased VO_2max).  Cheating athletes employ a wide variety of procedures to blood dope including: infusion of their own (autologous) stored red blood cells or those from another person (heterologous), administering erythropoiesis stimulating factors (e.g., rHuEPO, darbopoietin, IGF-1), and administration of HIF stabilizers such as cobalt chloride and xenon. Strategies to deter blood doping include testing for the doping agent, biomarkers of abnormal erythropoiesis, and the Athletes Biological Passport (ABP). The ABP is an electronic record of an athletes hematological biomarkers of possible doping that are longitudinally analyzed for variances that exceed established permissible limits. ABP results are used to target athletes for additional testing for doping agents, or used as evidence for anti-doping violations. Although these deterrence strategies have been effective, the cheating athletes continually modify their blood doping strategies to minimize detection. The cat and mouse game between cheating athletes and anti-doping agencies have resulted in several novel new detection / deterrence approaches.  One new novel approach incorporates statistical physics to develop individualized equations of RBC population dynamics regarding cell volume and cell hemoglobin concentration.    

Speakers

• Current Status of Hematological Manipulation and Detection in Sport
  
  Larry Bowers — Science & Research, US Anti-Doping Agency


• Physiology of Blood Doping & Challenges
  Yorck Olaf Schumacher — , Aspetar Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Hospital


• Pharmacology of Erythropoiesis Stimulating Agents
  Steve Elliott — ,


• Athlete Biological Passport, Detection Methods and Complementary Biomarkers
  Daniel Eichner — , Sports Medicine Research Testing Laboratory


• Red Blood Cell Population Dynamics and Individualized Modeling
  John Higgins — Center for Systems Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital