(CORRECTION*) NYTimes – HGH sports doping test available. How reliable? How’s it work again?
Not too often does a sport story, even in the NYTimes, merit inclusion on the paper’s on line listing of science news stories. This morning is one that made the list. Reporter Michael S. Schmidt tells readers that a new more refined test for human growth hormone, or HGH, is within months of a likely approval by the leading world agency that oversees anti-doping tests of athletes. It comes as the test already has had an impact – it led to suspension earlier this year of a professional rugby in Britain after his blood failed the new test.
For all that, the story is unnecessarily sparse on detail. It strikes a puzzling analogy between this new tool, which Schmidt describes simply and without elaboration as the biomarkers test, and other tests that screen for bone and breast cancer. These other tests are screening tests – with followup examinations usually performed to find out what a person really has before surgery or chemotherapy begin. This new hgh test, one infers, may be taken as incriminating in itself and could thus mean the end of careers for many athletes.
Quite aside from absence of any technical detail on what the test measures other than things called biomarkers, there is no mention here of rates of false positives or negatives or other potential confounding variables. Such aspects may not be easy to pin down, but they ought to at least be mentioned.
As it happens, the science side of this news has circulated already, if only within the considerably more rarefied confines of people who read the News of the Week section of the AAAS journal Science. There, in the March 5 issue, European News Editor John Travis wrote much the same basic story but in considerably greater detail (prev. link good for EurekAlert! embargoed news registrees. Direct link to pdf here). His piece, too and however, skirts the ticklish issue of false positives and what recourse athletes will have in arguing that maybe that’s why they flunked. But it does explain nicely how the test works, and why it must be administered within a few days of a blood doping incident (hence is best as a random, unannounced screen of athletes-in-training, not something to use when they show up for the event).
*CORRECTION – As seen in the comment below from John Travis, in the previous graf I (CP) got turned around on which test is now under review for wide use. The existing, older test is the one that must be used within a few days after use of extra HGH. The new one is able in many cases to detect such doping for a much longer period of time. Thus the question in the following graf pertains primarily to the existing test, which would continue in use, along with the new biomarker test, in the anticipated change in screening for HGH.
Plus, a question for Travis or other reporters who get into this. If the test, as Travis reports, relies on determining abundance ratios of the main form of hgh with a second form, or “isoform,” of the hormone that the body manufactures (but that injections of HGH do not include), than cannot the dopers’ suppliers make formulations that include both isoforms in natural proportion?
Samplings of related stories:
- NYDaily News – Christian Red, Nathaniel Vinton (Mar 18) : World Ante-Doping Agency calls on Major League Baseball to implement HGH testing ;
- NYTimes – Michael S. Schmidt, Richard Sandomir (Mar 18 ): Push to Test for HGH Intensifies ;
- Telegraph (UK) Jacquelin Magnay (Feb. 24) : Terry Newton drugs breakthrough prompts human growth hormone alert ;
- Charlie Petit
March 29th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Charlie–First, let me clear one confusing bit in the post above. The current approved test for HGH is the isoform test–it tests directly for HGH and must be within 48 hours of doping. The NYT tries to describe the 2nd biomarker test that remains unapproved but can detect up to 2 weeks after doping. I also describe that biomarker test and note some problems validating it, albeit not false-negative or positive rates. Your very interesting question concerns the first test–not the biomarker one the NYT deals with. Still, dopers could in theory do what you say but I believe HGH isn’t synthesized–it’s a recombinant protein made by gene engineering, so the dopers would need to learn biology to make the other isoform, rather than chemistry.
March 29th, 2010 at 11:23 pm
WEll! Other than totally inverting the descriptions of the tests and thus, once again, revealing the perils of writing fast and thinking slow, I was spot on. Thanks. I’ll rework the post tomorrow, with a nod to you.
March 30th, 2010 at 6:18 am
No problem. It is an interesting science story–I totally skipped the US-funded efforts to develop a urine HGH test which are really struggling. And when the compound is natural, the issue shifts from false-positives/negatives to defining what is “normal”. The doping testers have to validate normal ranges of HGH isoforms, or related biomarkers changes by HGH use, by examining hundreds, or thousands of elite atheletes and normal people. In the end, the best they can say is an athlete’s HGH isoform ratio/biomarker level is so high/low that not 1 in 1000, 10,000, 100,000 have the same profile–I’d love to be a lawyer challenging that in court, but sports organizations aren’t the legal systems (most of the time!)
January 25th, 2011 at 7:36 am
I’m confused is this a good thing or a bad thing? i assume that the discovery of this new method for doping test would be good for professional sports specially in baseball where there’s a lot of allegation that some players take performance enhancing drugs to elevate their game.