Do athletes have a right to access data in their Athlete Biological Passport?

Application of Skyline software for detecting prohibited substances in doping control analysis

As the number of prohibited drugs has been progressively increasing and analytical methods for detecting such substances are renewed continuously for doping control, the need for more sensitive and accurate doping analysis has increased. To address the urgent need for high throughput and accurate analysis, liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry is actively utilized in case of most of the newly designated prohibited substances. However, because all mass spectrometer vendors provide data processing software that is incapable of handling other instrumental data, it is difficult to cover all doping analysis procedures, from method development to result reporting, on one platform. Skyline is an open-source and vendor-neutral software program invented for the method development and data processing of targeted proteomics. Recently, the utilization of Skyline has been expanding for the quantitative analysis of small molecules and lipids. Herein, we demonstrated Skyline as a simple platform for unifying overall doping control, including the optimization of analytical methods, monitoring of data quality, discovery of suspected doping samples, and validation of analytical methods for detecting newly prohibited substances. For method optimization, we selected the optimal collision energies for 339 prohibited substances. Notably, 195 substances exhibited a signal intensity increase of >110% compared with the signal intensity of the original collision energy. All data related to method validation and quantitative analysis were efficiently visualized, extracted, or calculated using Skyline. Moreover, a comparison of the time consumed and the number of suspicious samples screened in the initial test procedure highlighted the advantages of using Skyline over the commercially available software TraceFinder in doping control.

Substance Use and Addiction in Athletes: The Case for Neuromodulation and Beyond

Substance use, misuse and use disorders continue to be major problems in society as a whole and athletes are certainly not exempt. Substance use has surrounded sports since ancient times and the pressures associated with competition sometimes can increase the likelihood of use and subsequent misuse. The addiction field as a whole has very few answers to how to prevent and secondarily treat substance use disorders and the treatments overall do not necessarily agree with the role of being an athlete. With concerns for side effects that may affect performance coupled with organizational rules and high rates of recidivism in the general population, newer treatments must be investigated. Prevention strategies must continue to be improved and more systems need to be in place to find and treat any underlying causes leading to these behaviors. This review attempts to highlight some of the data regarding the field of substance misuse and addiction in the athletic population as well as explore possible future directions for treatment including Neuromodulation methods and Ketamine. There is a need for more rigorous, high-quality studies to look at addiction as a whole and in particular how to approach this vulnerable subset of the population.

'Clean athlete status' cannot be certified: Calling for caution, evidence and transparency in 'alternative' anti-doping systems

Athletes, sponsors and sport organisations all have a vested interest in upholding the values of clean sport. Despite the considerable and concerted efforts of the global anti-doping system over two decades, the present system is imperfect. Capitalising upon consequent frustrations of athletes, event organisers and sponsors, alternative anti-doping systems have emerged outside the global regulatory framework. The operating principles of these systems raise several concerns, notably including accountability, legitimacy and fairness to athletes. In this paper, we scrutinise the Clean Protocol™, which is the most comprehensive alternative system, for its shortcomings through detailed analysis of its alleged logical and scientific merits. Specifically, we draw the attention of the anti-doping community - including researchers and practitioners - to the potential pitfalls of using assessment tools beyond the scope for which they have been validated, and implementing new approaches without validation. Further, we argue that whilst protecting clean sport is critically important to all stakeholders, protocols that put athletes in disadvantageous positions and/or pose risks to their professional and personal lives lack legitimacy. We criticise the use of anti-doping data and scientific research out of context, and highlight unintended harms that are likely to arise from the widespread implementation of such protocols in parallel with - or in place of - the existing global anti-doping framework.

Athlete Biological Passport: Need and Challenges

The Athlete Biological Passport programme was initiated in 2009 by the World Anti-Doping Agency for making the anti-doping programme more effective and stronger. There are three modules in this ABP programme: haematological, steroidal and endocrinological. Currently, the first two modules have been implemented. The newer products such as recombinant human erythropoietin, recombinant proteins, and peptides are similar to those produced naturally. Hence, detection of these substances even with advanced techniques is difficult. Therefore, the concept of ABP came into existence which is based on longitudinal monitoring of biological markers and their variations over a period of time. The ABP does not rely upon the detection of a particular prohibited substance but it reflects the changes in biological markers collated over an athlete's career. Hence, athletes can be monitored through constant interpretation of the passport data. There are many advantages with the implementation of this programme; however, there are various issues which may lead to false interpretation of passport data that must be taken into consideration.