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DewDiligence

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Tuesday, 09/18/2007 2:56:15 AM

Tuesday, September 18, 2007 2:56:15 AM

Post# of 213252
hGH Urine Test Is Still Years Away

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/sports/18hgh.html

>>
September 18, 2007
By DUFF WILSON

Although the World Anti-Doping Agency says confidently that a reliable test for human growth hormone in the blood of athletes will be available for wide distribution later this year and for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Dr. Don Catlin is “inching” ahead in the much more difficult task of detecting the hormone in urine.

Being able to test for H.G.H. in urine is preferred by professional baseball and football leagues, which already test urine for other performance-enhancing drugs. A blood test is considered the more direct approach, but those leagues would have to come to an agreement with their unions through collective bargaining over taking blood samples.

Catlin, a drug-testing pioneer, said in a telephone interview yesterday that his research on finding a urine test for H.G.H., which he said was being financed by Major League Baseball and the National Football League Players Association, was making “little bits of progress every day.”

But, he said, it is still years away from the success he hoped for.

“It’s about as challenging a project as one can get in the field — but that’s not to say it’s insurmountable,” he said.

“The topic heats up every few months, and everybody wants an update. I’m just careful, cautious and conservative. I don’t like to be out there waving flags and fingers. I suspect I could get more funding if I asked for it. Bud Selig has said as much to the press [LMAO]. They’re all interested, so I’m giving it a try.”

On its Web site, the World Anti-Doping Agency says that the chances of developing a reliable urine test for H.G.H. are “remote.” Catlin said he would be watching the coming use of the WADA blood test with great interest.

“If there is a really good test that comes out, there might be no point in my continuing,” Catlin said, before referring to the United States Anti-Doping Agency. “On the other hand, the approach I’m taking with urine is different, and there’s value in that, not only in the professional leagues, but with Usada and the N.C.A.A.”

All of those sports organizations currently use urine testing to detect and deter doping by athletes.

Asked whether he would recommend continuing his work on a urine test if the blood test was reliable, Catlin said: “It depends on how good the blood test is and how the progress is going on the urine test. I’ll just have to wait and see how good it is.”

Catlin, sometimes referred to as the father of drug testing in sports, was the director of the Olympic Analytical Laboratory at U.C.L.A. from 1982, when he founded it, until earlier this year. He left the university in March to join the Anti-Doping Research Institute, a nonprofit organization he had founded in 2005.

Catlin said he was studying four major approaches to detecting growth hormone or its markers, including genes, through urine samples. He said about eight researchers were working at the institute on three-year, $500,000 grants from Major League Baseball and the N.F.L.P.A. That research is still in an early stage.

Catlin said that a blood test, when it is released by WADA, would have to be effective because it would have to withstand legal challenges. “This will be a serious test, and we’re all aware of that,” he said.

Frédéric Donzé, the media-relations manager for World Anti-Doping Agency, said in an e-mail message that the agency would not comment on details about how it would start implementing a growth-hormone test for blood samples.

“WADA anticipates that the kits will be available for large-scale production and distribution in late 2007,” he said.

The test is expected to be used in the 2008 Olympics and be available for other uses. Baseball and football, which do not test for H.G.H., have had to deal with recent reports about athletes using growth hormone. The leagues will have to decide whether to push for blood testing, which is opposed by the unions, or continue to hope a urine test can be developed.

The antibody to be used in blood testing was identified by a research team led by Dr. Christian J. Strasburger, the chief of endocrinology and a professor of medicine at the Charité-Universitätsmedizin in Berlin.

An H.G.H. antibody test was used on about 300 athletes at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens and a smaller number at the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy. All tested negative, leaving open the question, repeated by baseball and football officials, of whether a blood test would be reliable in catching dopers.

WADA insists it is reliable and ready to go.

“I don’t think we can afford to wait,” said Dr. Gary I. Wadler, a member of WADA’s Prohibited List and Methods Committee. He is also a clinical associate professor at New York University School of Medicine and author of the book “Drugs and the Athlete.”

WADA has added a second test to “be combined with the current test to further enhance the detection window for H.G.H. abuse,” according to the WADA Web site.

WADA had some difficulty finding a commercial partner to produce the antibody on a large scale, but it found one last year in Germany. Donzé said the company required WADA to keep its name confidential. But, he said, it “is well established in the area of clinical diagnosis immunoassays.”

Wadler predicted that the blood test developed by WADA would be widely available in the final quarter of 2007, but that the chances of a urine test in the distant future were “not impossible, but remote.”

Human growth hormone is produced naturally in the pituitary gland, but it can also be reproduced synthetically. It can be prescribed for limited medical uses. It can also improve athletic performance and, some believe, slow the aging process. Possible side effects include diabetes, heart disease, muscle and joint pain, and abnormal growth.
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