There are two common methods of determining the presence of HGH or any performance enhancing drug from an athlete. Sports organizations may opt to use urine testing or blood testing. WADA uses both in testing professional athletes in every competition. They are implementing an out-of-competition test which uses urine testing while in-competition screening uses blood testing. For every test conducted by the organization, two samples are taken from its athletes. The B sample can be requested for a confirmatory test if there are questions on the result of the A sample.

Dr. Johnny Benjamin, a noted combat-sports specialist and consultant said that both methods have its own advantages and disadvantages. There are factors that should be considered in adopting the most appropriate and effective method. Dr. Benjamin is also a member of the Association of Boxing Commissions’ MMA Medical Subcommittee and a medical columnist at MMAjunkie.com.

In his recent column, Dr. Benjamin said that urine testing is cheaper than blood tests. Another advantage of urine testing is it has fewer potential complications. Most sports organization uses this method because it is cost effective. In state high schools where steroid testing is being implemented, urine test is their choice. However, for large scale testing, like in Texas and Illinois, the state and athletic organizations still spend too much for this method alone. From the initial implementation of the drug testing, Texas allotted a budget of $6 million dollars for a 2-years drug testing program. Lawmakers reduced the amount to just $2 million this year because of recession. Other states discontinued their own steroid testing program because of budgetary constraint.

A new technology was also developed at George Mason University that helps detect traces of HGH even after weeks of HGH or steroid use. The urine test uses nanotechnology to bind and amplify HGH in urine. Another steroid specialist agrees that HGH and steroids can still be detected even after two weeks or even longer. Dr. Harrison Pope, director of the biological psychiatry laboratory at McLean Hospital in Belmont said that it’s hard to avoid detection even after discontinuing its use since the tests can still pick up steroid traces in urine. There are some athletes who failed drug testing even if they claim that they used steroids 8 months before the competition. An example of this is the case of MMA Chris Leben who was suspended by NSAC for a positive steroid result after conducting a post-fight test.

Blood screening, on the other hand, can only detect HGH from the system for up to 48 hours according to experts. According to Dr. Pope, it is one of the reasons why many elite athletes have gravitated toward man-made growth hormones, which mimic the substance secreted from the brain’s pituitary gland, and are much tougher to detect. He added that within hours after injecting man-made growth hormones, the substances are nearly impossible to detect in the blood stream.

However, blood testing still plays a significant role in detecting doping professional athletes. One of the advantages of using a blood test is it is more sensitive which means it will likely detect a banned substance. It is also used to detect more types of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. The sport organization that effectively use this method is cycling. They were able to trace cyclist who were taking EPO and CERA. These are both used to increase performance during competition.

Athletes who may use masking agents to avoid detection will still likely fail a blood test. Blood screening is the current standard for detecting abnormally elevated levels of synthetic human growth hormone (HGH) according to Dr. Benjamin.

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