Blood Doping

Blood Doping

Introduction:

The sporting culture has become highly competitive, causing athletes to turn to drugs or supplements to gain that edge over other athletes. Some athletes have even looked past drugs and supplements to pass the competition testing policies, turning to blood doping. Blood doping is the act of extracting blood from an athlete, then prior to competition re-injecting the blood back into the athlete’s body. This is a very dangerous procedure that is usually performed by a doctor.

Current Trends:

Current trends of blood doping have been under discussion in the Tour de France, Olympic skiing, and marathon running. The use of blood doping is mainly used in endurance sports because the effects are most beneficial to those sports that require a higher amount of oxygen consumption, which is also known as VO2 [2]. The most current use of blood doping occurred in May of 2006, when Spanish police raided a Madrid doping clinic and seized blood doping supplies. The police report published about the incident from the raid, traced at least 50 professional cyclists, in which 23 of them were disqualified from the 2006 Tour de France [1]. As you can tell, blood doping was a popular choice of those participating in the 2006 Tour de France.

Literature Review:

Summary:

Blood doping is a multi step process that is usually performed by an individual that has a medical degree. In the first step of the blood doping procedure, a doctor draws up to four units of blood (1 unit = 450 ml) from an athlete’s body, which puts their body into an anemic state. The human body contains 10-12 pints or units of blood [1]. The blood that is withdrawn is then centrifuged to separate the red blood cells from the plasma. The centrifuged vial of red blood cells is then placed in a refrigerated space for up to 40 days, keeping the cells viable. With the athlete’s body having a low count of red blood cells, the body recognizes that more red blood cells need to be produced. As a response, your body releases a hormone produced by the kidneys known as erythropoietin (EPO), which stimulates red blood cell production in the bone marrow as a response to low oxygen levels in the blood [1]. After four weeks the red blood cell count is back to normal, so now the refrigerated blood cells are then re-infused into the athlete’s body boosting the red blood cell count higher [4].

The idea of blood doping is to increase the levels of red blood cells, so that your body can hold and transport more oxygen to areas of the body that are in need [5]. New prescription drugs have become available to the public that perform the same task as the standard blood doping, but without transfusions of blood. Some of the drugs are Procrit (most popular), aranesp, eprex, and neorecorman [1]. The new prescription drugs are available in a vial-liquid form, just like insulin for diabetics. The drugs increase the hematocrit (HCT) level or the percentage by volume of red blood cells in the blood. In men, the normal HCT levels range is in the mid-40s, were trained endurance athlete’s levels can reach into the low 50s, but with the EPO drugs the levels can increase into the low 60s. The increase in HCT levels correlate to more oxygen carried throughout the body, which gives the users a huge competitive edge over their peers [5].

Pros of Blood Doping:

Although the procedure can be very dangerous, there are large amounts of positive results that are seen throughout the research that has been conducted. Blood doping is highly effective and can increase endurance exercise performance levels by up to 4% in the elite athletes. Blood doping also is known to boost the VO2 max (maximum energy intake) and can reduce lactate buildup, which provides the athlete with more endurance. With blood doping, the ergogenic (exercise performance boosting)