Doping control of anabolic steroids

✍ Scribed by Siu C. Chan

• Publisher: Elsevier
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 493 KB
• Volume: 31
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0015-7368
• DOI: 10.1016/s0015-7368(91)73143-5

✦ Synopsis

Anabolic steroids are analogs of testosterone, the male sex hormone. Testosterone has both androgenic, or masculinizing, and anabolic, or muscle-building, effects. Efforts to modify the testosterone molecule to minimize the androgenic effects led to the synthesis of anabolic steroids. However, it is not possible to eliminate the androgenic properties of the molecule. Anabolic steroids are extensively metabolized, and in most cases it is the metabolites in the urine that are being monitored in dope testing. Hence it is important to have an understanding of the major metabolic pathways of the different anabolic steroids. Many of these metabolites are conjugated as glucuronides and sulphates; consequently, any comprehensive steroid screening procedure would include a hydrolysis step, usually by enzymes. Analysis is by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Human urine contains many endogenous steroids, including androgens, progestogens, and corticosteroids, some of them in significant amounts. For this reason, a gas chromatogram obtained with universal detection is very complex, and it is difficult to identify anabolic steroids in the full-scan mode. The selected ion monitoring mode is used instead. The anabolic steroids that most dope testing laboratories currently test for are listed in Table . This list is constantly being revised to include newly-investigated compounds.