Faster steroid detection in urine
One of the growing problems in sports is the use of prohibited substances, specifically anabolic steroids and performance-enhancing drugs by professional athletes to help muscle grow faster and help them gain advantage in their athletic performance. Some of the sports affected by these banned substances are track and field, baseball, football and cycling.
Several of the famous personalities involved in steroids controversies were track and field players Marion Jones and Ben Johnson; baseball stars Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, and many more. American cyclist Floyd Landis was stripped of his championship in the 2006 Tour de France. Professional and college football players alike use steroids to help them in their performance.
Current methods of steroid detection involves time-consuming processes and complicated preparation steps. In addition, results take longer to determine.
Anabolic steroids in urine can now be traced in a matter of seconds. Two state-of-the-art techniques desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) and tandem mass spectrometry make this possible.
Zheng Ouyang, R. Graham Cooks and colleagues, developed a new method of steroid detection, which can identify seven different anabolic steroids in a few seconds using a urine sample.
The method was described in Analytical Chemistry. It involves no time-consuming sample preparation and takes only a few seconds.
From Science Daily:
Amid growing concerns about sports “doping,” researchers in Indiana and China report development of a faster and more efficient method for detecting the presence of illegal anabolic steroids in urine.
Tags: anabolic steroids, desorption electrospray ionization (DESI), tandem mass spectrometry
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