Tracing doping use by amateur athletes from wastewater | Hacker News Reader

Tracing doping use by amateur athletes from wastewater

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Hmm, How effective is this? I recently watched ICARUS and I have been reading a lot about doping and how athletes circumvent the tests done by WADA labs ( World Anti Doping Agency). I have a couple of questions regarding this and in no particular order of importance

(1) Should a state decide to implement something like this, isn't this some sort of privacy violation by the state? People could have been prescribed these Anabolics by a physician too, don't they also come under the scanner?

(2) Also, I don't clearly understand the sampling here, tons of gallons get pumped into the wastewater system. How much quantity of samples would be collected for testing purposes? and what is the frequency of these samples being collected?

(3) Please totally excuse my ignorance here, the major banned substances for which athletes have been banned are "Methylhexaneamine", "Methenolone","Oxandrolone", and a lot of "Stanozolol" and "Turinabol" ( I m getting all this from this wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doping_at_the_Olympic_Games#Di...). The table in the paper doesn't seem to mention any of these substances. Are they mentioned under a different name?

(4) Also, in the light of new information (ie) state-sponsored doping, Lance Armstrong escaping some 500 Lab tests & going completing uncaught by WADA and so many other labs around the world, as a spectator I already know that a ton of Olympic athletes are doping. Isn't the actual problem trying to prove that "individual" athletes are doping? A collective evidence is probably not as useful anymore since all watchdogs, sports committees and spectators are more skeptical from the get go.

I think part of the thinking behind this is just scientific curiosity (“let’s see if we can do it”)

They collect the wastewater kilometers from the sporting events, so spatial and temporal resolution (where was this dumped into the sewer? When?) will be too low to target individual users.

Application I think will at best be for policy development (what sport should the doping agency focus on? What chemicals? Do people use that new thing that’s being talked about?), not for catching individual users, and probably not even for use at the event being monitored.

(1) This is being measured in aggregate. It's no more privacy violating than, say, measuring the amount of non-recyclable trash that ends up at the recycling sorting facility.

(2) Consult the methodology section.

(3) Methylhexaneamine (DMAA, spelled "methylhexanamine" in the article) is the 3rd highest thing in the table. There are several other anabolic steroids in the table (see list below). Chemicals tend to sell under several different brand names and your list may intersect the article's list. It's also possible the article's list just contains a different set of chemicals.

To categorize briefly (the list is heavily steroid-focused):

Aromatase inhibitor (prevent aromatization of androgens into Estrogen): Anastrozole, Clomiphene, Tamoxifen

Masking steroid use: Finasteride (new tests obsolete this, at least for pros)

PED/Weight loss: Clenbuterol

Stimulants: Norephedrine, Ephedrine, Methylhexanamine (DMAA)

Steroids: Trenbolone, Nandrolone, Metenolone, Mibolerone, Metandienone

Weight loss: Sibutramine, 2,4-Dinitrophenol

Also note Table 1, which shows (basically) how quickly various PEDs degrade at different temperatures. Several of them degrade in 0-1 days at 20° or 4°C. So unless a large population is taking them (ephedrine), they tend to drop off of test results.

The other consideration is LOD / LOQ (limit of detection, limit of quantitation) — lower levels here ease detection and measurement.

(4) This study is targeted more broadly at the recreational athlete population, rather than pro athletes.

Also note the steroids OP listed are all orals, the list you have for steroids are oils that are injected.

All of these are used with a testosterone base. You don't want to run any of these without test. Some people back in the early bodybuilding days would use nandrolone (better known as Deca or the other variant equipose) as a stand alone cycle but that isn't recommended now.

Another thing that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere here is the use of HGH, IGF1, and insulin.

If you're training seriously for physical sport you need to be on an HGH cycle. This is something that isn't illegal(well its usually aquired illegally) and is prescribed through 'healtg and wellness' or anti-aging clinics.

Insulin is probably going to be more common for weight lifting because it is an incredible anabolic hormone. There are huge risks to using it and can kill you if you mess up. Shockingly anyone can walk into Walgreens and buy it though.

Thanks. I haven't used steroids myself and am unfamiliar with the details of doing a cycle. Quick google search — you would use the testosterone base because the steroids otherwise inhibit your natural test production?

Is there any good evidence that HGH helps sports? My understanding is that there evidence is limited and it isn't clear it's positive.

Correct the other steroids can still cause your natural production to shut off which is going to make your body feel like crap.

HGH is going to be beneficial because of it's going to increase collegan in your body which will make your joints and ligaments stronger. It's going to help with wuicker recovery from from work outs. Also most people report getting better sleep while using it. So hgh isn't going to make you huge directly rather it's more of a behind the scenes thing helping you out. If you are predisposed for cancer though you might want to be careful. Hgh of course does increase the rate of cellular growth and division so you are increasing your odds of cancer by taking it, I'm not a doctor and that could be bs but I think it's worth considering considering

The same basic technique was used to study the prevalence of cocaine use in several European cities. They analyzed the level of drug metabolites in sewer water.

http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/topics/pods/waste-water-analysis...

Pretty interesting. I worked in the athletics (cycling) industry for around 5 years and I always suspected that there's a lot of doping among amateur athletes. From what I understand, it's most common in amateur cycling among masters racers.

Anabolics are also very prevalent in the lifting/bodybuilding world at all levels including amateur circles. IIRC it was legal up until the 90s, and enforcement is a low priority for LEO. Hell, Ronnie Coleman was a cop for a long time.

Bodybuilding and powerlifting have both tested and untested federations. The untested federations tacitly approve PEDs. (And people in the tested federations, at least for powerlifting, are often caught for PEDs.) Weightlifting, as far as I know, has no untested federations.

To the grandparent post, you'll probably be interested in the recent documentary "Icarus". It's on Netflix.

There's the 'American Weightlifting Federation' which was created primarily so the founder could slam barbells.

I actually thought about that, but I didn't know if they were still around. I want to say I figured they tested, but I doubt they were big enough or organized enough to.

Coming from an amateur bodybuilder yes it is everywhere. I've been on for a couple years now. Once you've done some cycles you realize how many people use especially what is known as 'fake nattys', people who claim to not use publicly in interviews and Instagram etc but have physiques which could never be possible without gear.

Most amateur sports from what I've found such as cycling (bikes not gear), martial arts, football, you can bet most people are using to some degree.

The op mentioned masters class, and there's a tight correlation there to older men being prescribed trt. A lot of people also take that and then up the dose a bit more to the point where they're running a full cycle and should be taking an AI.

That's another aspect as well where people will claim it's just trt dose, but no I'm sorry but when you got puffy nipples because of your trt dose and no AI you're on a full cycle.

Do you know why that is? It seems possible that it could be because masters racers started doping back before testing was prevalent/sensitive and now can't stop without a precipitous drop-off in performance that would raise eyebrows. Just conjecture though.

More likely because the masters guys have more disposable income and very little at stake if they get caught. With spare cash they've probably bought all the bike upgrades they can and are training as much as their spare time allows so doping is the easiest way to improve. Also, anything to slow the decline with age...

Likely a factor of financial means as well. There's a lot of spare-no-expense weekend warrior types in the Masters ranks, whereas the younger open racers tend to be scrappier.

Also, it's probably somewhat of a "who cares anyway?" attitude. They're not gonna go pro, they're not getting tested, etc. Any kind of competition involves someone bending the rules, like it or not.

The difficult thing about anti-doping in amateur athletes is that the stakes are way too low to be testing that frequently, unless you are at the very top of the amateur range. And when you stop doping your fitness gains don't disappear if you continue to train. One of EPO's main benefits (as I understand it) is to improve recovery and allow one to train harder. So an athlete could use EPO for a year, training harder and more frequently than they otherwise would and then stop the next year and enter competition with a lot of their previous fitness gains carried over.

the reason masters racers dope is because nobody tests masters, and nobody really cares if masters racers dope (except for the other competitors).

That makes sense. I was thinking masters might be tested even at the amateur level but I guess that's rare even at the high levels of competition.

super rare. race organizers hate paying for anything they don't absolutely have to, and the national anti-doping organizations don't test amateurs. The rules packets for most amateur races say no doping allowed, and threaten random testing, but in reality it never happens.

I know for a fact that an amateur cyclist in the UK was banned for 2 years for testing positive for EPO after taking part in a race. I believe he had been deliberately targeted for testing because of suspicions about his performance.

The race organiser does not pay for the testing directly. British Cycling takes a small levy for every rider taking part in a race and I imagine this goes towards paying for the random testing.

The UK anti-doping website has a list of all current and historical bans for drug test rule violations covering a wide range of sports:

https://www.ukad.org.uk/anti-doping-rule-violations/current-...

When younger athletes max out their training capacity, they either come close to pro level (where any doping would be out of scope for the question of the perceived age correlation in recreational doping) or they lose interest. They lose interest either completely, or at least enough to be fully aware that more training could make them so much better. It's easy to resist doping if you know that the amount of training is your main bottleneck.

Age groupers are much more persistent, they have their hobby permanently dialed in, they wouldn't even know where else to search for a sense of achievement. They are used to getting faster from a combination of better technology and better training, and to some of them doping might seem almost like a natural extension of carbon and training plans when those are maxed out. Fortunately, the deep end of both the training and the carbon is so far out that I am confident that it's still only a small minority who falls for the temptation (the very few testing that has happened on the amateur level concentrated on the top results, if doping works, that's where you will find the dopers)

(source: getting more carbon and more training as I get older)

For those not into cycling

carbon -> carbon fibre bike parts, which is way lighter and way more expensive but makes you go faster with less effort

If we're talking about road cycling, UCI rules already have a lower limit on bike weight so there are no more gains to be had there. Anyone with money can buy a stock 6.8kg carbon fiber bike off the shelf without swapping parts. To increase power/weight ratio further the rider has to lose fat.

Triathlon bike rules are looser, but most triathlon courses have less climbing so aerodynamics take precedence over minimizing weight.

As I see it, the simple answer is just social status and, by proxy, social opportunity. People who are into cycling often place a ton of importance on how good of an athlete someone is. When I worked in the industry, I routinely saw people get hired or promoted simply because of how fast they were. We called the effect "speed goggles" meaning that you viewed the world through speed-colored glasses. So doping could mean the difference between getting hired or not or gaining stature among a group of peers. Of course no one I met in industry ever openly condoned the practice of doping -- quite the opposite. But their admonitions often seemed to ring hollow. You knew that everyone wanted to be faster. And you knew how much importance people tacitly placed on it.

Outside Magazine had a great article where an amateur athlete experimented on himself by doping and reporting on the effects.

https://www.outsideonline.com/1908791/i-couldnt-be-more-posi...

I'd never heard of 2,4 DNP, so I looked it up. Nasty stuff, and I can't see how it would help performance. Apparently it reduces body fat, but has been deemed too dangerous to use since 1938. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dinitrophenol

not used for performance. used by bodybuilders to cut before competition

Generally for most endurance sports, losing weight is gaining time. It's why one might see someone using a cocktail of drugs, some to help with endurance/O2 uptake others with lowering weight to affect both sides of the power/mass ratio.

It's a weight loss drug. I've done a rough categorization of the full list here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16777656

As far as why it counts as "doping" — it is probably used by body builders to drop body fat to competition levels. Anecdotally, without chemical help you are hungry all the time at 4-8 %bf.

Also, the common wisdom among runners is that body fat is dead weight and losing it makes you faster and reduces load on your joints. So it may help there too. Cyclists probably see less benefit, but less fat may help acceleration and hill climb ability.

For those sports where there are weight classes, losing 5-10 pounds rapidly can move you from a weight class we're your average to a weight class where you dominate.

Yes this article confirms that professional cyclists in the Tour de France are under 6% and hungry all the time. But they have to be careful not to go too low or they run the risk of getting sick and dropping out of the race.

https://www.outsideonline.com/2099881/how-skinny-are-top-tou...

Yeah. In running there is some belief that it may be safer and healthier to train at less extreme %bf in the off season, and only drop to extremely low %bf shortly before and during the race season.

DNP is really nasty shit. It's very popular for bodybuilding because it really does work great but you can get yourself into serious trouble if you aren't careful.

Also running dnp in the summer is not something you want to do. Your body heat goes up like crazy and it's miserable in the summer.

The drug itself is just a dye basically and it will ruin everything it touches.

If you want to know more about DNP search /r/steroids for it. There's endless threds and posts about it's use.

I'll take a lot of stuff, but DNP is the one I won't touch.

What if you flush a lot just to mess with anyone testing it?

It's less about catching violators and more about understanding the epidemiology of PED abuse. It may be possible to isolate populations that need direct testing but by that point you're putting traps on every sewer pipe associated with an event, it'd just be easier to test everybody directly.

or, you know, just piss on the ground outside.

This detection is easy to circumvent: use an outhouse or septic tank.

That's neither easy (where will you find access to those?) nor will it circumvent testing. It'll concentrate your waste in a septic tank that's clearly yours, not mixed with all the neighbors. These researchers measured waste water downstream where it was mixed from many people so they can't identify anyone individually.

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