NCJ Number
222200
Journal
Forensic Science International Volume: 174 Issue: 2-3 Dated: January 2008 Pages: 166-172
Date Published
January 2008
Length
7 pages
Annotation
In order to determine whether a better interpretation of the testosterone/epitestosterone (T/E) ratio can enhance the detection of testosterone abuse, this study selected 12 case studies to represent various scenarios to which antidoping laboratories are confronted for detecting testosterone abuse in elite athletes; the relationship between the sensitivity and the specificity was calculated for the different approaches.
Abstract
The study found that the Bayesian interpretation of the T/E-time profiles enabled researchers to obtain a true positive result with a T/E value as low as 2.1 and a true negative result with a T/E ratio as high as 14.2; whereas, any population-based limit in between would have the opposite result. The authors thus propose replacing the population-based limit of current screening tests by a limit that adapts itself as a function of previous test results performed on the individual. This method has already shown its advantages for the analysis of blood doping. The lack of specificity of current screening tests causes unnecessary work for the collection of additional samples and/or analysis with isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS). This lack of specificity is not compensated by a higher sensitivity. The sensitivity of a population-based limit at 4.0 is significantly smaller than the sensitivity obtained by the Bayesian test. For the current study, 12 case studies were selected to represent the possible scenarios to which the anti-doping laboratories are confronted. These case studies were selected from a database of more than 15,000 steroid profiles obtained from routine controls, the collection of steroid profiles of 11 elite athletes monitored for 2 years, and a longitudinal study of 17 amateur athletes, 8 of whom were orally administered testosterone undecanoate pills. 1 table, 2 figures, and 23 references