Resumen de Performance-Enhancing Drugs in Sports: How Chemists Catch Users
T. C. Werner, Caroline K. Hatton
The “cat-and-mouse game” between those who enable athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) and those who try to detect such use provides a wealth of interesting examples for the undergraduate chemistry and biochemistry classroom. In this article, we focus on several commonly used PEDs, including amphetamine, anabolic steroids, erythropoietin (EPO), and human growth hormone. The benefits that athletes get from these PEDs, the analytical detection methods, and their limitations are discussed, along with approaches that athletes have used to try to avoid or circumvent positive tests. The tests for PEDs are timely and appropriate examples of applications of hyphenated mass spectrometry, isoelectric focusing, immunoassays, and gel electrophoresis. Student interest in PED use by athletes is inherently high and almost-weekly headlines keep the topic relevant at all times.
