Antidoping programme and biological monitoring before and during the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil.

BACKGROUND: The FIFA has implemented an important antidoping programme for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. AIM: To perform the analyses before and during the World Cup with biological monitoring of blood and urine samples. METHODS: All qualified players from the 32 teams participating in the World Cup were tested out-of-competition. During the World Cup, 2-8 players per match were tested. Over 1000 samples were collected in total and analysed in the WADA accredited Laboratory of Lausanne. RESULTS: The quality of the analyses was at the required level as described in the WADA technical documents. The urinary steroid profiles of the players were stable and consistent with previously published papers on football players. During the competition, amphetamine was detected in a sample collected on a player who had a therapeutic use exemption for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The blood passport data showed no significant difference in haemoglobin values between out-of-competition and postmatch samples. CONCLUSIONS: Logistical issues linked to biological samples collection, and the overseas shipment during the World Cup did not impair the quality of the analyses, especially when used as the biological passport of football players

Integration of the Forensic Dimension into Anti-Doping Strategies

Traditionally, research in anti-doping has been stimulated by the need for technological improvements to accommodate the expansion of the list of prohibited substances and methods. Nevertheless, in recent years, anti-doping found itself at a crossroads due to the increasing complexity and constant refinement of doping methods. As illustrated by the 2012 USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) versus Lance Armstrong case, a change in paradigm was necessary. The exploration of new scientific avenues to understand the mechanisms of doping and pinpoint its practice was most needed to allow designing more efficient preventive or disruptive strategies. In this context, and at the time of writing in 2017, transposing the concept of forensic intelligence to anti-doping was identified as a promising approach to address the different aspects of doping, from the individual athlete to organized doping and trafficking of substances in a proactive rather than a reactive way. Indeed, collection, structuring, and logical processing of multiple sources of information, and not strictly results of bioanalytical testing of urinary and blood samples, can bring additional value to detect and describe potential, emerging, or existing doping issues. This anti-doping intelligence can provide anti-doping authorities and relevant stakeholders with timely, accurate, and usable information for decision making to solve, reduce, and/or prevent doping-related activities. The integration of intelligence to complement other anti-doping approaches is a potentially major step forward in the development of more effective and robust anti-doping strategies

A forensic perspective of the AFL investigation into peptides: an antidoping investigation case study.

BACKGROUND: The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is introducing enhancements to doping investigations in its 2015 Code, which include improved sharing of information between antidoping organisations (including sporting bodies) and enhanced accountability of athlete support staff. These additions will improve the control of links between sports doping and organised crime. In February 2013 the Australian Crime Commission released a report that linked several professional sporting codes, professional athletes with links to organised crime, performance enhancing drugs and illicit substances. Following this report the Australian Football League (AFL) partnered the Australian national antidoping organisation to investigate peptide use in Australian football. METHODS: This review compared the model proposed by Marclay, a hypothetical model for anti-doping investigations that proposed a forensic intelligence and analysis approach, to use the forensic capabilities of the AFL investigation to test the model's relevance to an actual case. RESULTS: The investigation uncovered the use of peptides used to enhance athlete performance. The AFL investigation found a high risk of doping where athlete support staff existed in teams with weak corporate governance controls. A further finding included the need for the investigation to provide a timely response in professional team sports that were sensitive to the competition timing. In the case of the AFL the team was sanctioned prior to the finals as an interim outcome for allowing the risk of use of performance-enhancing substances. Doping violation charges are still being considered. DISCUSSION: Antidoping strategies should include the investigation of corporate officers in team doping circumstances, the mandatory recording of all athlete substance use during competition and training phases, the wider sharing of forensic intelligence with non-sporting bodies particularly law enforcement and collaboration between antidoping and sporting organisations in doping investigations. CONCLUSIONS: The AFL investigation illustrated the importance of the 2015 WADA Code changes and highlighted the need for a systematic use of broad forensic intelligence activities in the investigation of doping violations

A one-year monitoring of nicotine use in sport: frontier between potential performance enhancement and addiction issues.

Tobacco consumption is a global epidemic responsible for a vast burden of disease. With pharmacological properties sought-after by consumers and responsible for addiction issues, nicotine is the main reason of this phenomenon. Accordingly, smokeless tobacco products are of growing popularity in sport owing to potential performance enhancing properties and absence of adverse effects on the respiratory system. Nevertheless, nicotine does not appear on the 2011 World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Prohibited List or Monitoring Program by lack of a comprehensive large-scale prevalence survey. Thus, this work describes a one-year monitoring study on urine specimens from professional athletes of different disciplines covering 2010 and 2011. A method for the detection and quantification of nicotine, its major metabolites (cotinine, trans-3-hydroxycotinine, nicotine-N'-oxide and cotinine-N-oxide) and minor tobacco alkaloids (anabasine, anatabine and nornicotine) was developed, relying on ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography coupled to triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (UHPLC-TQ-MS/MS). A simple and fast dilute-and-shoot sample treatment was performed, followed by hydrophilic interaction chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HILIC-MS/MS) operated in positive electrospray ionization (ESI) mode with multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) data acquisition. After method validation, assessing the prevalence of nicotine consumption in sport involved analysis of 2185 urine samples, accounting for 43 different sports. Concentrations distribution of major nicotine metabolites, minor nicotine metabolites and tobacco alkaloids ranged from 10 (LLOQ) to 32,223, 6670 and 538 ng/mL, respectively. Compounds of interest were detected in trace levels in 23.0% of urine specimens, with concentration levels corresponding to an exposure within the last three days for 18.3% of samples. Likewise, hypothesizing conservative concentration limits for active nicotine consumption prior and/or during sport practice (50 ng/mL for nicotine, cotinine and trans-3-hydroxycotinine and 25 ng/mL for nicotine-N'-oxide, cotinine-N-oxide, anabasine, anatabine and nornicotine) revealed a prevalence of 15.3% amongst athletes. While this number may appear lower than the worldwide smoking prevalence of around 25%, focusing the study on selected sports highlighted more alarming findings. Indeed, active nicotine consumption in ice hockey, skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh, skating, football, basketball, volleyball, rugby, American football, wrestling and gymnastics was found to range between 19.0 and 55.6%. Therefore, considering the adverse effects of smoking on the respiratory tract and numerous health threats detrimental to sport practice at top level, likelihood of smokeless tobacco consumption for performance enhancement is greatly supported

Perspectives for Forensic Intelligence in anti-doping: Thinking outside of the box.

Today's approach to anti-doping is mostly centered on the judicial process, despite pursuing a further goal in the detection, reduction, solving and/or prevention of doping. Similarly to decision-making in the area of law enforcement feeding on Forensic Intelligence, anti-doping might significantly benefit from a more extensive gathering of knowledge. Forensic Intelligence might bring a broader logical dimension to the interpretation of data on doping activities for a more future-oriented and comprehensive approach instead of the traditional case-based and reactive process. Information coming from a variety of sources related to doping, whether directly or potentially, would feed an organized memory to provide real time intelligence on the size, seriousness and evolution of the phenomenon. Due to the complexity of doping, integrating analytical chemical results and longitudinal monitoring of biomarkers with physiological, epidemiological, sociological or circumstantial information might provide a logical framework enabling fit for purpose decision-making. Therefore, Anti-Doping Intelligence might prove efficient at providing a more proactive response to any potential or emerging doping phenomenon or to address existing problems with innovative actions or/and policies. This approach might prove useful to detect, neutralize, disrupt and/or prevent organized doping or the trafficking of doping agents, as well as helping to refine the targeting of athletes or teams. In addition, such an intelligence-led methodology would serve to address doping offenses in the absence of adverse analytical chemical evidence

Is urine thc-cooh a proper marker for problematic cannabis use?

Purpose: Young cannabis users are at increased risk for several mental health issues including dependence, depression and psychosis. THC-COOH (one of the two major metabolites from delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol) is mostly used as a marker for both cannabis intoxication and abstinence when tested in urine. The present study assesses to which extent urine THC-COOH may help identify problematic cannabis users. Methods: Data are issued from an observational study where, for methodological purposes, specific groups were recruited based on their tobacco and cannabis profile in the past month. Among a total of 269 participants, 57 cannabis-only users and 72 cannabis and tobacco users completed an anonymous self-administered questionnaire describing their cannabis use in the past month, and most precisely in the past 5 days. The CAST (Cannabis Abuse Screening Test), a well validated questionnaire for both clinical and large epidemiological studies, was used to identify problematic cannabis use. Based on 6 items, participants scoring 2 and above were described as problematic cannabis users (PCU; N¼81, mean age 19 years, 64% male) in comparison to non-problematic cannabis users (NPCU; N¼48, mean age 19 years, 63% male). All participants also provided a urine sample that was blindly analyzed for THC-COOH among other substances, using gaschromatography coupled mass-spectrometry. PCU and NPCU were compared on their cannabis use in the past month (at least once a week/less than once a week), number of consumptions in the past 5 days (meanSE), and urine THC-COOH levels (meanSE). As a way to determine if urine THC-COOH is a proper marker to identify PCU, we used the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve to assess its sensitivity and specificity using various cut-off values. Results: Smoking cannabis at least once a week was reported more frequently among PCU than NPCU (95% vs. 63%; p<0.001). Using ANOVA, mean cannabis consumption in the past 5 days (11.31.0 vs. 4.30.7; p<0.001) and mean urine THC-COOH level (291.661.4 vs. 82.652.7; p¼0.021) were higher among PCU than for NPCU. With an optimum cut-off of 21 ng/ml, positive urine THC-COOH displayed a sensitivity of 79% and a specificity of 58% for problematic cannabis use. Using values above 120 ng/ml, its specificity increased to more than 95%. Conclusions: Even if urine THC-COOH levels were found to be much higher among problematic cannabis users, such method seems poorly performant in identifying them from other regular cannabis users. Nevertheless, individuals presenting with high value for THC-COOH on urine drug testing should definitely be evaluated regarding cannabis use disorder

Validation and performance comparison of two carbon isotope ratio methods to control the misuse of androgens in humans.

Carbon isotope ratio of androgens in urine specimens is routinely determined to exclude an abuse of testosterone or testosterone prohormones by athletes. Increasing application of gas chromatography/combustion/isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC/C/IRMS) in the last years for target and systematic investigations on samples has resulted in the demand for rapid sample throughput as well as high selectivity in the extraction process particularly in the case of conspicuous samples. For that purpose, we present herein the complimentary use of an SPE-based assay and an HPLC fractionation method as a two-stage strategy for the isolation of testosterone metabolites and endogenous reference compounds prior to GC/C/IRMS analyses. Assays validation demonstrated acceptable performance in terms of intermediate precision (range: 0.1-0.4 per thousand) and Bland-Altman analyses revealed no significant bias (0.2 per thousand). For further validation of this two-stage analyses strategy, all the specimens (n=124) collected during a major sport event were processed