Steroids Blog

The growing popularity of anabolic steroids is something that has been troubling anti-doping officials in the recent past. Despite many measures to curb the use of steroids, there have been reports of growing number of steroid users. The trends are alarming in the worlds of bodybuilding, professional sports, and aging community.

With reports of many sportsmen on steroids coming these days, one often makes a conclusion that almost every one was on steroids till steroid testing measures were introduced by the anti-doping fraternity.

From SteroidTimes.com:

In a recent study done by Strahm et al at the Swiss Laboratory for Doping Analyses not very reliable (1). They examined the T/E ratio and its variances between ethnic groups because of a testosterone over epitestosterone (T/E) ratio exceeding 4.0 is considered as suspicious of testosterone administration, irrespectively of individual heterogeneous factors such as the athlete’s ethnicity. Strahm and colleagues found that a deletion polymorphism in the UGT2B17 gene was demonstrated to account for a significant part of the inter-individual variability in the T/E between Caucasians and Asians. By estimation of the prevalence of the UGT2B17 deletion/deletion genotype (African: 22%; Asian: 81%; Caucasian: 10%; Hispanic: 7%), ethnic-specific thresholds were developed for a specificity of 99% for the T/E (African: 5.6; Asian: 3.8; Caucasian: 5.7; Hispanic: 5.8).

In other words the group at the Swiss doping lab found out that a blanket T/E ratio is not accurate enough for the testing protocol and that “significant differences have been observed between all ethnic groups.” There conclusion was “that an athlete’s endocrinological passport consisting of a longitudinal follow-up together with the ethnicity and/or the genotype would strongly enhance the detection of testosterone abuse.”

One of the biggest reasons behind the often unshared relationship between sports and steroids is the fact that steroids allow sportsmen to think and act beyond the normal, and for staying ahead of the competition without any hiccups.