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Steroid Testing Flawed
March 11, 2009
PARIS (AFP) — Swiss scientists have placed a major question mark over World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) guidelines for testing for muscle-building male steroids in urine.
The test is all but useless, for it fails to take into account a key genetic variation that hugely affects levels of testosterone found in samples, they say.
Individuals who have this variation are far less likely to breach a WADA threshold that requires closer scrutiny, they add.
The genetic variant is especially widespread among Asians but, at the other end of the scale, hardly present at all among Caucasians or Latin Americans.
In theory, it would give a drugs cheat of, say, Chinese or Japanese ancestry, a massive advantage over someone of European or Mexican ancestry, the lead scientist told AFP.
When it comes to this variant, “we are not all equal, it’s clear,” said Christophe Saudan, of the Swiss Laboratory for Doping Analyses at the University Centre for Legal Medicine in Epalinges.
Read all about it —> http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gseEHGCF2c55A6EwAVerGPKmBoTQ
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