A new technique for identifying doping and sport cheaters has been developed by scientists from Imperial College London and the University of Nottingham.
The finding was revealed in a research published in the journal Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry.
From News-Medical.Net:
The new approach, developed by scientists from Imperial College London and the University of Nottingham, allows easy analysis of the carbon ratio. It uses a catalytic reaction to strip steroids of their more aggressive parts whilst leaving the carbon ’skeleton’ intact. This technique, called hydropyrolysis, is commonly used to aid oil exploration by freeing small fragments of organic matter from petroleum rock sources.
Dr Mark Sephton, from Imperial’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering and lead author of the research, explained: “The type of carbon in the body’s molecules reflects the carbon ingested as part of an athlete’s diet, and if you can work out the carbon ratio in the molecules you can determine the source of the carbon.
“Drug cheats should beware. The carbon-based secrets of steroids are now apparent to the analyst. Thanks to our technique, in the future it will be much more difficult to escape detection when using performance-enhancing steroids“, he added.
This technique is expected to have the potential of examining the presence of naturally occurring and synthetically manufactured steroids in the human body.
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