Steroid Nation

Gene therapy -- myostatin -- Discovered once again

Ongoing research into gene therapies that purport to enhance muscular development, have concerned anti-doping authorities for years.  Such therapies, if successful, would radically alter the playing field of sport.  The haves (athletes who could afford the procedure, or who hijack it) would dominate the games over the half-nots.  Nonetheless medical researchers almost blindly push ahead (or push ahead for economic gain). 

Discover magazine jumps on the controversy with this post.  One commenter laments that holding up gene therapy because of doping cheats would slow down medical progress (although it never hurts to allow the ethics to catch up with the science).

A gene therapy treatment intended to reverse muscle weakness appears to restore muscle mass in monkeys, raising hopes that doctors may soon be able to treat this condition in humans with degenerative diseases like multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy. Scientists injected a gene into the monkeys’ thighs that causes cells to produce human follistatin, which interferes with another compound called myostatin. Myostatin breaks down muscle, so in theory adding follistatin should encourage muscles to grow [Reuters].

Frankly medicine marches onward, not slowed by much even ethical concerns.  As medicine becomes 'corporate' one wonders if the 'customers' who demand doping protocols, and who can afford the costs won't be rewarded in the future with out-sized sports achievements.  Kinda like buying the World Series...or buying a gold medal.

German scientists claim lab test detects gene doping

The next big trend in doping will be gene doping...the implantation of genes to develop strength, endurance, coordination, or stamina.  If this process isn't already on the steroid black market, it appears to be a major future challenge, as the technique is undetectable.  Or thought to be undetectable; a German lab says it developed a process to detect gene doping.  From Deutche World:

German researchers say they have successfully developed a test to detect instances of gene doping. As doping in the sports world becomes more sophisticated, genetic engineering is seen as the next major threat.

The test traces a special substance, known as GW1516, which artificially increases the volume of so-called endurance muscles and enzymes that gain energy from fat. 

"For the first time, a substance for gene doping has been traced through mass spectrometry," the German Sports University Cologne (DSHS) said of the procedure, which was announced this week.

Mario Thevis, a researcher who helped develop the test, said it was ready for use.

Pro cyclists may be caught doping with blood values, and genetic tests

Our colleague Robin Parisotto, who sits on the UCI (Cycling Union) board of doping reveals that doping charges may be levied by radical changes in pro cyclists's blood indices.  Story at The Australian.

THE first case of a cyclist being charged with doping on the evidence of his blood profile is expected to be prosecuted in the coming months, according to Australian anti-doping expert Robin Parisotto.

The International Cycling Union (UCI) has been building up blood profiles of its professional cyclists by taking thousands of blood samples over the past year.

Canberra scientist Parisotto, who sits on the UCI panel overseeing the anti-doping program, said yesterday more than 30 suspicious samples had been analysed and there was enough evidence to pursue a handful of riders for doping violations.

"We are only collating the results now but I expect in the next few months the UCI will be taking action against some cyclists," Parisotto said.

Sounds like the decisions about whom to prosecute are looming.

The blood profiling is designed to identify any cyclists using banned drugs or methods which manipulate the blood to improve endurance. He said suspicious samples usually contained high haemoglobin levels, or unusually low levels (which would indicate a cyclist was extracting blood to be re-injected during competition).

"There are discussions now about which are the strongest cases to go after," Parisotto said. 

"There's only a handful they can confidently follow up. But I believe in some cases the results are fairly strong and the athlete will have a hard time explaining them."

The first cycling case will be a test for this new method of identifying drug cheats.

Parisotto said there was a smaller number of suspicious samples than he would have expected if the program had been in operation three or four years earlier.

"Now there is more of an effort being made to weed out the cheats and I think some of them are getting scared," he said.

"The risk of getting caught is becoming much greater now that they have to worry about what's in their blood."

Indices to monitor include red blood cell parameters (hemoglobin, and hematocrit), EPO, and other physiological measures, that should be very stable in an individual athlete over time.  Also, Parisotto speaks of monitoring the response of particular genes to doping drugs, a very interesting development.

Parisotto, who developed one of the first tests for the blood booster EPO in the lead-up to the Sydney Olympics, is also working on the next weapon in the anti-doping war, genetic profiling.

"The technology is there now to do gene profiling on blood tests," Parisotto said.

He said any use of blood doping would show up in changes to an individual's gene activity.

The laboratories will just have to chart the abnormal changes that the drugs make to the blood and genes of the athlete.

No more track and field world records without steroids or doping?

As noted by the Irish Times, there were 11 track and field world records broken in 2008, which the author considered remarkable (nothing like the deluge of swimming records).  There was also this statement:

...the only way a world record is likely to be broken is if the athlete is on industrial amounts of steroids or a product of genetic doping, or indeed both.

Lets go to the set up for this conclusion.

Although 13 world records were set during 2008, one French study suggests the days of this happening are now numbered...

Seven of the world records were in men's events: the 100 metres (twice, by Usain Bolt); the 200 metres (Bolt, again); the marathon (Haile Gebrselassie); the 110 metre hurdles (Dayron Robles); the 4 x 100 metre relay (Bolt, again, with some Jamaican company); and the 50 km walk (Denis Nizhegorodov).

The women didn't do badly either, with six world records: the 5,000 metres (Tirunesh Dibaba); the 3,000 metres steeplechase (Gulnara Galkina); the javelin (Barbora Spotakova); and the pole vault (thrice, by who else but Elena Isinbaeva).

Given it was an Olympic year there was always going to be some exceptional performances, and yet the flurry of records during the summer still caught a lot of people off guard. Actually, at the start of the year, a study carried out by the French Institute of Sport (Irmes) concluded that the days of world records in athletics were numbered, and would run out in 2060 - after which date no more world records would be set.

Why would there be a limit to human performance?

Irmes analysed all 3,260 world records set since the first modern Olympics in 1896, and, in the end, reckoned athletes are coming very close to reaching their physiological limits. They noticed a common pattern for all events, and based on their mathematical model, estimated that athletes were operating at 75 per cent of their potential in 1896, while in 2008, they would be operating at 99 per cent.

By 2027 the athletes in about half of the events will have reached 100 per cent, and by 2060 they all will. After that the only way a world record is likely to be broken is if the athlete is on industrial amounts of steroids or a product of genetic doping, or indeed both.

That's a study for another day, and in the meantime it's up to athletic freaks such as Usain Bolt.

Exactly.  What about the influence of drugs, and of technological advances in the sport?  We have argued that doping pulls along the non-doped competitors, although we have no data to support that conclusion.

But what the Irmes study didn't predict was where exactly the records will finish at. Some may well be finished already. The 10.49 that Florence Griffith-Joyner ran for the 100 metres back in 1988 hasn't been touched in the years since, nor does it look likely to be. Without going into the gruesome details of the rise of Flo-Jo, as she was affectionately known, (widespread rumours of steroid abuse, dead at 38) only one other women has run under 10.7 seconds for the 100 metres, and that was Marion Jones.

In other words Flo-Jo's record is unlikely to be broken before 2060.

There are several other dodgy records in the books and they are unlikely to be broken before 2060 either. Unless of course the IAAF finally gets some sense and remove all world records from the drug-infested 1980s.

As the author  points out, other studies suggest that the limits of human performance have not been reached:

In another study just published by the Journal of Experimental Biology, Mark Denny of Stanford University looked at the limits to running in humans, compared to dogs and horses, and came to some conclusions of his own.

Denny reckoned that the 9.69 seconds that Bolt ran for the 100 metres in the Beijing Olympics can definitely be improved, and put the absolute human limit at 9.48.

Likewise, he believes Flo-Jo's record will go and that a woman can someday run the 100 metres in 10.39.

Dogs and horses, he says, already reached peak speeds in the 1970s, while humans are still getting faster. And Bolt is ample proof of that.

A more basic study was carried out on Bolt shortly after Beijing, when Norwegian physicist Hans Eriksen analysed TV footage of the Olympic final and estimated that Bolt would have run 9.55 seconds had he not slowed down to punch his chest and acknowledge his own extraordinary performance.

Even the long distances have some room for improvement. When Gebrselassie ran his 2:03.59 for the marathon last September it seemed the magical two-hour barrier was edging ever closer, yet Denny puts the human limit for running 26.2 miles at 2:00.47.

The women are already closer to their limit, as he reckons Paula Radcliffe's world record of 2:15.25 can only be trimmed to 2:14.97.

(more after the jump, if you can break the record)

Gene doping is OK? Conference attendees (Dope Now) say yes

Always someone pushing the envelope, or the needle as it were.  The WaPo publishers a piece on the gene doping conference held in Washington.

Gather a roomful of anti-doping experts, administrators, academics and athletes alike _ something a conservative think tank did Thursday _ and there is no consensus as to whether gene doping, thought by some to be the next frontier in Olympic cheating, is at hand.

Indeed, there isn't even consensus on whether it would be a bad thing.

Turns out there is a school of thought _ "pro-doping," it's called _ that suggests anything athletes do to improve performance is OK, even, for example, manipulating DNA or surgically enlarging the webbing between fingers and toes in order to swim faster.

So says Andy Miah, who teaches at the University of the West of Scotland and was among about 10 panelists who participated in Thursday's conference on "The Coming Age of the Uber-Athlete: What's So Bad about Gene Enhancement and Doping?" at the American Enterprise Institute.

According to Miah, academics are taking CERA EPO to be able to rush faster into the Dope Now camp.

Gene doping, which is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, is a spin-off of gene therapy, which typically alters a person's DNA to fight diseases.

Miah advocates "celebrating the value of performance enhancement," he said.

"I don't think a public health crisis would arise from enhancement technologies," he added.

Miah said there is a growing group of professors around the world _ "Four years ago, there were half as many people as now," he noted _ who back his "World Pro-Doping Agency" thought experiment. One of his premises is that sports wrongly are thought of as a separate entity, different from other pursuits or professions _ music, art, medicine _ where no one objects to, essentially, doing whatever one can to be the best one can be.

"We are more willing to embrace these enhancements, with the caveat that we need them to be safe enough," he said. "We don't all want to kill ourselves by using these things, but we are interested in exploring the realm of human embodiment that is beyond our current capabilities _ and that might be cognitive, it might be physical. And I think that's where sport isn't quite at yet."

Is Miah qualified to discuss health complications?  No, of course not.  And the rush for the Dope Now organization...probably doubled form 2 to 4.

Ignore the rules.  Ignore sportsmanship.  Ignore the very real threat to morbidity and mortality.  Ignore the science.  Ignore the fact that gene doping has never been researched in an appropriate test group...or any group.  Ignore the costs.  Let's just be cool and hip.  To Edwin Moses:

Other speakers Thursday included Olympic champion hurdler Edwin Moses and U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart, who believe gene doping should be banned, worry what it could do to athletes _ and agree someone is likely to try eventually.

"How do you feel if it's your son or your daughter who wants to be an Olympian? Would you let your kid or your grandchild take what they have to take? Or do what they have to do?" Moses asked.

On the other hand, he acknowledged there are those who will.

"If you have experts saying it's realistic to turn on pieces of your metabolism and it becomes feasible for the athletes to do something without killing themselves and it's not tremendously expensive, someone is going to try it," said Moses, who won gold medals in 1976 and 1984 in the 400-meter hurdles. "There will be someone who can convince an athlete they can get away with it."

An American swimming coach lays it all out:

John Leonard, executive director of the American Swimming Coaches Association, told of conversations he has had with coaches and scientists in China.

"We are really naive if we are to believe that the Chinese at this point are clean or that they are the only country in the world that is experimenting with genetic enhancement as we speak," said Leonard, who was not a panelist but attended the conference and spoke during question-and-answer periods.

"There are lots of countries in the world who couldn't care less about doing it safely, and there are lots of athletes who will take the chance that they will die in order to win medals. ... Will the United States have the same viewpoint when we start losing gold medals?"

Of course athletes will cheat to win.  How about those side-effects?  Enter Theodore Friedman, an actual scientist:

Theodore Friedmann, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, researches human gene therapy and spoke about the risks.

"People are injured. People die," he said. "It should be reserved for treatment of people with serious diseases."

He said he doesn't know whether there are athletes attempting gene doping.

"Nobody knows," he said, before adding: "It wouldn't surprise me."

About one thing Friedmann left no doubt, however: Unlike Miah, he thinks the practice has no place in sports.

"The anti-doping world accepts the notion that rules matter and, in fact, it reflects the wish of most athletes," Friedmann said. "The world of pro-doping is the contrary of all that."

Myostatin blocking gene therapy to be introduced for dogs; when will the first human athlete abuse it?

Prof Lee Sweeney of the University of Pennsylvania will be behind the introduction of a gene therapy approach to treat aged dogs who suffer muscular weakness.  Apparently elderly dogs who become progressively weaker (this is generally called old age) need treatments so their owners can take the canines on walks.  The therapy involves the injection of a genetically modified myostatin inhibitor that produces incredible muscular hypertrophy; the injection goes into the animal's liver.

Once this gene therapy reaches the public, h ow long will it be before an existing sports record becomes totally obliterated by newly enhanced and genetically modified athletes?

This raises several issues just in the vet use of the technique:

• Isn't aging natural?  Do elderly dogs -- as lovable as they are -- really need to be revitalized so the owners can walk them?  At what cost?
• Might counseling on the normal aging in biology be more effective?  Aging is part of every organism.  Why fight the changes that are inherent in the DNA of the animal, to protect the fragile emotional status of the owner?

To the Telegraph:

An American professor is preparing to market a form of canine gene therapy, which would see dogs injected with substances which switch off the genes that regulate their muscle growth.

Prof Lee Sweeney, from the University of Pennsylvania, has pioneered research into gene transfer technology, a field in which poorly functioning and abnormal genes are manipulated, switched off or replaced.

Ten years ago he created "mighty mice" in the lab with enormous muscles and strength in old age. Now he says experiments on dogs have been so successful that he is preparing to market the treatments to owners of ageing pets across the United States.

He said: "We are now in the final stages of getting all the approvals to offer this through the veterinary hospital as a treatment to try to improve strength in pet dogs.

"As the dogs get weak their owners get upset that they can't walk around any more. So we're hoping that within the next year we will begin the era of genetic enhancement in dogs."

Under the therapy, dogs would be given an injection into the liver of an inhibitor which switches off the gene which produces myostatin, a protein which inhibits muscle growth in animals and humans.

One would hope Sweeney has considered the implications of his genetic enhancement.  The first issue is the economic issue of enhancing an aging dog to mollify the owner.  Obviously an aging animal in the wild gets eaten, which is not a good outcome for a domestic pet.  Domestic pets decline gradually, with the resultant dysfunction experienced by all aging organisms; pet owners keep the animals comfortable until the inevitable sad day when the pet can longer function well.   But does this justify an attempt to allay the aging process in a canine?  At what price? 

Sweeney must consider that if the gene therapy is marketed to vets, that soon, genetically enhanced greyhounds will be winning the dog races.  Once the Schwarzenegger greyhounds win races, human athletes will take notice; actually they already have.  To the Telegraph again:

He (Dr. Sweeney) gets between five and 10 emails a week from athletes, some from Britain, and so many phone calls that his secretary has stopped putting them through.   And that is in a quiet week.

If he publishes an academic paper or does a media interview, a flurry of 50 or   more calls and emails usually follows, as it did 10 years ago when he first   revealed his 'mighty mice' to the world at a meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology – laboratory mice with enormous muscles that retained their   strength and regenerative ability even when the animals reached old age.

Sweeney's super-strong rodents were the product of his pioneering research   into gene transfer technology and the implications were clearly not lost on the athletes and coaches who got in touch, one of whom offered $100,000 for what the mice were getting.

Shockingly, Sweeney also received a request from a high school American football coach for his entire team to be genetically modified.

Sweeney told him what he is still telling everyone a decade later, that bulking up on gene therapy is not yet safe enough for humans and would require heavy-duty immune suppression. He always gets the same response.

"Even if I explain to them that to make it work might require all sorts of heroic measures, they basically say, 'Fine. I'll do it'. And if it's a matter of money, they'll get the money."

Sweeney has never been contacted by a name he recognises – "I don't get Barry Bonds calling me up" – and says most of the would-be guinea pigs appear to be young athletes trying to make the big time.

"Some of them are from Europe," he says. "I get quite a few   from the UK and Germany."

He says he would feel uneasy about passing on their names to the anti-doping authorities but is sufficiently concerned to have accepted a seat on the gene-doping panel of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), who are funding   eight research projects on gene-doping detection in a desperate attempt to stay ahead of the cheats.

Sweeney is bracing himself for another surge of calls and emails next year when his work moves from the laboratory to the commercial world with a muscle-building gene therapy for dogs.

Even though Sweeney knows the illicit demand for the mystatin inhibitor, he will market the drug anyway...ah the power of economic windfalls can outstrip the ethical considerations of the enhancements.

We have a chapter on genetic enhanced performance (GEP) or Performance Enhancing Genetics (PEGs) that looks at the issues. Sweeney has considered the issues too as summed up by the Telegraph:

Sweeney hopes his new canine anti-aging treatment will be just the start.  Humans have the same gene that Sweeney is manipulating in dogs and the nex  step will be to treat people with serious genetic diseases such as muscular dystrophy. Ultimately, he hopes to give the elderly, like the pampered  pooches of Pennsylvania, greater muscle strength and mobility in their final   years.

But any breakthrough will inevitably be seized upon by dope cheats in the same way that clinical drugs such as steroids, human growth hormone and the red blood cell-boosting EPO soon found their way into kit bags. With the prospect of as yet undetectable, lifelong enhancement, how could any drug cheat resist?

As gene transfer technology enters the medical mainstream as a treatment for numerous diseases from blindness to cancer, scientists are agreed it is only a matter of time before it crosses over into sport.

Some predict that London 2012 could be the first genetically modified Olympic Games. Others say the Beijing Games may already have that dubious honour.

Here is a therapeutic enhancement that may render all PEDs obsolete.  The results are shockingly dramatically impressive; the technology undetectable at present; and the technique will soon be available.

Performance Enhancing Drugs are simply amateurs when compared to the potential power of Performance Enhancing Genetics.  Looks like that brave new world of astonishing sports feats will be ushered in very very soon.

EPO implicated in stroke study deaths

From the AP comes a report of a clinical study treating stroke subjects with EPO which found a higher death rate in the EPO group.  There will be a line in here about the link to sports doping with EPO; however looking at side effects in an elderly population suffering a stroke is far different than looking at side effects in an athletic population.

A blockbuster anemia drug made by a Johnson & Johnson company has been linked to the deaths of some patients in an experiment testing whether it could help stroke patients.with

J&J's Ortho Biotech unit said late Wednesday that it had learned of preliminary data from a study in which participants were being given its drug Procrit within six hours of suffering an ischemic stroke, in which an artery blockage limits the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain.

In the study, which was designed and initiated by a German scientist, more patients treated with Procrit died than in the comparison group receiving a placebo.

Johnson and Johnson released a PR statement, possibly to stem the criticism that pharmaceutic companies cover up deleterious side effects.

"Ortho Biotech chose to publicly communicate the results ... because of what we feel are potential safety implications," said company spokesman Mark Wolfe.

He said it is J&J's understanding that the idea behind the study "was based on data suggesting that patients suffering from stroke might benefit from epoetin therapy."

Epoetin alfa is the chemical name for the Procrit brand. The drug is also sold by another Johnson & Johnson unit under the name Eprex outside the United States, and Amgen Inc. sells it under the name Epogen in this country.

The drugs are all approved for treating anemia in cancer patients, people with kidney disease undergoing dialysis and some patients with HIV. They are not approved in any country for treating ischemic stroke patients. 

EPO, although frequently abused by athletes, is dangerous.

Strong warnings have been added to the package information for these drugs in recent years, as they have been linked to growth of existing tumors in some cancer patients and, at high doses, to heart complications and death.

The drugs work by stimulating production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. Other versions, known as EPO, have been linked to doping by some athletes and banned because they boost endurance...

According to Wolfe, the study had been completed and preliminary data revealed a higher death rate.

Considering the report a few days ago of the ability of EPO to alter neuroanatomic structure, in conjunction with the information given above, this is a very interesting drug which appears to stimulate growth in a number of cell types.

Sunday Doping Dose: Olympics and testing

1. Dr. Berry argues for a more open doping control and doping testing.  (Houston Chron)

2.  Wired looks a gene doping again.

3.  The NFL's San Diego Chargers has no one left after injuries and steroids suspensions (is there a a connection)  (North County Times)

Are Chinese gymnasts the anti-doping: delaying puberty?

A quick look at the Chinese pre-pubescent girl's gymnastics team, with the new 'flexible birthday feature' makes one wonder if the anti-doping overlord hasn't emerged into the 2008 Olympics.  We wondered if these girls qualify for kindergarten this year in Ohio?

US Olympic coach Bela Karolyi isn't the least bit pleased.

"They are using half-people," Karolyi said. "One of the biggest frustrations is, what arrogance. These people think we are stupid. "

Everything seems to be enhanced in China:  the fireworks, the little girls, the athletes.  Reuters covers the sad record of Chinese doping infractions...it takes 3 Internet pages.

This girls gymnastic team seems incredibly young.  One wonders about the anti-doping.  Like delaying puberty with a drug such as metformin, or histrelin, or even gene-doping.  Intense exercise can delay puberty too.

Low-dose metformin treatment over four years was associated with later menarche, half as much fat mass gain, and less insulin resistance among low birthweight girls who developed pubic hair before age eight, Lourdes Ibanez, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Barcelona in Spain, reported at the Endocrine Society meeting.

The drugs inhibit the hypothalamic release of gonadotropins, thus delaying those nasty things from puberty such as weight gain, expanded pelvic bones, increased fat, breasts, and menstruation.  Cute, huh?  Like the team.

Salon discusses this:

Why does being younger provide an advantage for a female gymnast?

Nellie Kim, a five-time Olympic gold medalist for the former Soviet Union, says it's because they're lighter and more fearless, which allows them to perform more difficult maneuvers. Kim was 23 when she competed in her final Olympics in 1980, where she won two golds.

The Vienna Boys Choir once used 'castration' to keep those young voices high.  Why not keep those gymnasts young?

The Chinese coach is no dummy.  Here is his quote:

The Chinese coach, Lu Shanzen smartly responded, "If you think our girls are little because of looks, then maybe you should think the Europeans and Americans are strong because of doping."

Monday 11-August steroid booster: Olympics information overload

Too much information

1.  The Wall Street Journal discovered gene doping.

2.  Tim Layden and SI on how swimming records tumble daily -- and no one pays attention.

3.  Katerina Thanou makes this list of darkest Olympic moments.

4.  The New York Times says let the dopers dope...with all the usual suspects quotes. 

Norman Fost, a professor of pediatrics and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin. “The claims of the common fatal or irreversible harms of anabolic steroids are without any medical foundation. There’s no reason to think the risk of injury or death is as high as the risk from simply playing sports like football or baseball.”

Wonder if Dr. Fost has stats to back up HIS claims?  What is the risk of death from baseball?  What is the risk of death from cardiac disease from an anabolic steroid or HGH?  Who has the data?  Wonder if the use of a drug during a strenuous sport actually compounds the morbidity and mortality risks?  How about the concurrent use of nandrolone, HGH, insulin, T3, EPO, and Winstrol?  Must be harmless?  Inquiring minds want to know.  There are papers out there.

5.  So Beijing doped up those fireworks?

6.  Basketball and cocaine in Latvia?  No way Kaspers Kambala.

Tattooed and doped: The skinny on new delivery system for drug cheats

Sky News gives us a story about a new delivery system for the dope: tattoos.

Inserting drugs through tattoo needles increases the effect of drugs, meaning athletes can take smaller doses and "fly under the radar" in dope tests.

Research in Germany has shown that delivering DNA vaccines via tattoo was 16 times more effective than injecting through the muscles or veins as the vibrating tattoo needle prepares the body's immune system and increases the body's response to the drug.

The guy on the left has to be a lifter looking for some extra from the arms.

Former Australian Institute of Sport researcher Robin Parisotto said a handful of athletes

He said: "With some of these things the technology is so new, the concept so bizarre, that there would only be a handful of well tapped-in athletes using it - but they will be experimenting at the Beijing Olympics because it is the ultimate.

"The problem is that some of the drugs would now fly under the radar with the tattoo technique because athletes would be taking a much smaller dose."

The author of 'Blood Sports: The inside dope on drugs in sport' said cheating athletes are also combining the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra with doses of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas. Both drugs increase the flow of oxygen in the blood stream and therefore boost sporting performance.

So if Viagra can be delivered via tattoo, where does that one go?  What's up with Kim Maher above?  Or Bulgaria's Ivet Lalova to the left?

Science now develops 'exercise in a pill'; sport soon to abuse it

Scientists, seemingly moving forward with discovery at all costs, have developed two molecular manipulations of metabolism. The LA Times carries the story.

One is known as AICAR, and the other as GW1516, a drug increasing PPAR peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors.  PPAR-d binds to regions of DNA.

Scientists have discovered what could be the ultimate workout for couch potatoes: exercise in a pill.

In experiments on mice that did no exercise, the chemical compound, known as AICAR, allowed them to run 44% farther on a treadmill than those that did not receive the drug."You're getting the benefits of exercise without having to do any work," said David Mangelsdorf, a pharmacologist at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who was not connected with the research.

Great, no exercise and all benefits.  Welfare cardio.

 

His team started not with AICAR but with another compound known as GW1516, which drug maker GlaxoSmithKline is trying to develop to raise levels of HDL, or good cholesterol. The drug is known to stimulate the production of a protein known as PPARd, which in turn activates the genes that boost endurance in muscle cells.

In sedentary mice, the drug had no effect on endurance. Only when the drug was combined with exercise did it give the mice an advantage. After five weeks of training, mice that got the drug were able to run for an average of three hours and 24 minutes, a 68% improvement over mice that received only training.

When the researchers dissected the test mice, they found that the number of high-efficiency muscle fibers had increased 29%. "That's a huge increase," Evans said. "That's the kind of stuff that Lance Armstrong and endurance athletes aim for."

The lab turned attention to AICAR.  5-amino-4-imidazolecarboxamide ribonucleoside (AICAR) markedly activates cellular AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK).  The drug also enhances insulin action.

Evans decided to try AICAR because it closely resembles a nucleotide that prompts the production of an enzyme that activates the high-endurance genes.

To Evans' surprise, the experiment worked. When sedentary mice were fed the drug daily for four weeks, they were able to run an average of 1,795 feet on a treadmill, 44% farther than mice that had received a placebo.

It is nice the lab thought of doping...

In the meantime, Evans said, his team has developed detection protocols for both compounds and their breakdown products and turned them over to the World Anti-Doping Agency in Montreal.

He said it was unclear whether the tests would be in place for the Olympics.

Frederic Donze, a spokesman for the association, said in an e-mail that the organization "does not indicate when it implements new detection means or methods."

But, he added, it is not crucial for the tests to be in place now.

"A number of anti-doping organizations, including the International Olympic Committee, store doping control samples of their events for eight years for potential future retesting and detection as anti-doping science advances," Donze said.

Someday these drugs, probably meant for muscle wasting disease will be appropriated for illicit uses.  And so it goes.

Sunday Steroid Injection

1.  Gene doping sleuth, Dr. Ted Friedmann.  (San Diego Union-Tribune)

2.  Univ of Vermont prof studies doping in pro cycling.  (Burlington Free Press)

3.  New book claims 1960 Rome Olympics turning point in doping.  (Wichita Eagle)

4.  More on gene doping.  (Miami Herald) (Illustration MCT)

5.  Director of the Baseball Hall of Fame Jeff Idelson discusses the Bonds astrisk ball, among other things.  (The Day.com)