Stimulants and Doping in Sport

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Categories of Stimulants

The class of stimulants prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)20 contains various agents with different structural features. Many of these compounds are derived from phenethylamine or phenylpropanolamine core structures (Fig. 1) and represent drugs such as amphetamine (1), methamphetamine (2), methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, ecstasy, 3), or cathine (4), ephedrine (5), and metamfepramone (6). Additional alkaloids with stimulating properties are cocaine (7) and strychnine (8),

Prevalence of stimulants in sport

Stimulants have been a major problem in elite sports and numerous adverse analytical findings (AAFs) have been annually reported by doping control laboratories worldwide. In Table 1, the WADA statistics of 2003 to 2007 are summarized,27 indicating that constantly more than 10% of all AAFs were related to drugs belonging to the class of stimulating agents. In 2003, more than 50% of doping offenses with stimulants were because of ephedrine and its stereoisomer pseudoephedrine. The latter was

Gas Chromatography, Mass Spectrometry/Nitrogen–Phosphorus Specific Detection

Stimulants and alkaloids in general were among the first analytes to be tested in systematic doping controls. In the late 1950s, based on chemistry that provided characteristic and more or less quantitative data by means of color reactions, the capability of gas chromatography (GC) to separate compounds relevant for doping controls was recognized and introduced into sports drug testing to measure various classes of analytes, predominantly sympathomimetic amines.29, 30, 31, 32, 33 Analyzers such

Summary

Stimulants play an important role in sports drug-testing programs. The great variety of compounds belonging to this class of prohibited substances represents a challenge for doping control laboratories, but the sensitive and selective nature of analytical instruments and detection assays has enabled comprehensive screening procedures that not only reveal the misuse but also the presumably unintended intake of banned compounds. Several instances of natural products illegally enriched with

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Manfred Donike Institute for Doping Analysis, Cologne, for supporting the presented work.

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