Anti doping agencies are not putting their guards down when it comes to steroids use among their athletes. It is seen as a continous battle within the organization or even in courts just to let these players know that steroids have no place in sports. Anti doping officials believes that steroid users are always one step ahead in competitions thus giving them an advantage over other athletes.

Sporting authorities worldwide are doing all the possible solutions to break this cycle of steroids use among athletes which is used to boost their stamina or power.A report from AFP, shows that more agencies and even the government is taking a big role in stopping steroids use in sports. It was reported last month that the French government, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), an union of pharmaceutical companies and France’s sanitary supervision agency made a pact to combat steroid use among athletes.

The goal is to establish a double alert level while identifying products that could be misused for doping in early clinical testing, or during final sanitary checks before a drug goes on the market according to the report.

The French Government expects that with this initiative, they could expand this at least within the European Union. This was presented last week in Biarritz during a meeting of EU sports ministers.

The collaboration between different agencies seems to be effective when they were able to detect banned substances from this year’s Tour de France participants. This was made in cooperation between anti-doping laboratories and the pharmaceutical or biotechnological industry. One pharmaceutical company is Roche which then started to cooperate with the WADA-accredited Swiss Anti-Doping Laboratory (LAD). Roche allowed the anti doping agency to have access not only to the molecule itself but also to detection tests developed for its own patients.

Although the results only served as secondary evidence but it was confirmed by other tests conducted by the French laboratory of Chatenay-Malabry. This pave the way for the agency to give sanction to the four racers in the Tour de France.

World Anti Doping Agency Director olivier Rabin said that “Cera was the first collaboration with a big pharmaceutical group on such a scale.” One of the first steps was made in 2002, when US biotech firm AMGEN Inc provided samples of its newly developed EPO, Aranesp, enabling authorities to identify several cheats who won medals at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

WADA says it has since established cooperation, acting from case to case, with corporations developing substances judged as “the most promising ones,” under a confidentiality clause. “Their goal is to treat patients and not to have healthy individuals use a product and… have it poorly administered,” insists Rabin.

Rabin estimates that the “pharmaceutical industry has became aware of its responsibilities.” The head of the Lausanne anti-doping laboratory, Martial Saugy also stated that the new move is beginning to gain ground.

It was also during the 1990s that most of the pharmaceutical corporations believed they would not benefit from cooperating with these anti doping agencies. “Others agreed in the name of ethics, but were afraid of being obliged to spend astronomical sums to add a mark to their product.” said Saugy.

It is also expected that more pharmaceutical companies producing steroids product would cooperate with anti doping agencies as these would also benefit them. With this collaboration, it would also help fight against fake products in the market. Anti doping laboratories will be able to know and report any molecules that are copied.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS