May 1, 2008

Some Athletes’ Genes Help Outwit Doping Test. : Studies suggest that about 2/3 of Asian men and nearly 10 percent of Caucasians lack both copies of a gene used to convert the testosterone into a form that dissolves in urine, calling into question the efficacy of certain drug tests.

read story | posted by holden to General at 2:30 PM CDT (5 comments total)

So you're saying that Caucasians will have a 10% likelihood of being caught using that drug while Asian men will likely be caught 66.6% of the time?

posted by worldcup2002 at 5:37 PM CDT on May 1

The other way round, wc2k2. It seems some people have a gene that means they won't get caught by standard urine tests for testosterone. I assume that tissue or blood tests will still work.

The article also discusses the athlete's diary approach, which means everyone gets measured against their personal baseline levels, for a range of things. This will make the whole testing process much more complicated and costly.

posted by owlhouse at 5:56 PM CDT on May 1

This should make the China Olympics real fun. Asia FTW!

posted by worldcup2002 at 8:50 PM CDT on May 1

Apart from a simple DNA test being able to identify who might be able to get an advantage from this, I'm sure there's people out there already into things like gene doping.

posted by owlhouse at 10:05 PM CDT on May 1

Here's some deeper analysis

posted by kokaku at 5:29 AM CDT on May 2

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