Abstract des Autors

Introduction: For ethical and moral reasons we should concentrate in doping control on the most important ways to manipulate performance, of which blood doping is the most important in endurance sports. Methods of indicating heterologous blood have existed for a long time.Test principle: The detection of heterologous red blood cells in the circulation (and in the sample) is based on the statistical probability of finding a difference in blood group factors between the recipient and the transfused heterologous red cells. This difference is revealed by blood group determination. The test methods are standard blood grouping techniques based on hemaglutination given e.g. in the Technical Manual of the American Association of Blood Banks (9th ed, 1985). Theoretical considerations: The general probability of finding at least one such difference (the recipient negative and donor positive for the corresponding blood group factor) between the recipient and donor equals 0.9292. This probability has been calculated using the Finnish blood group frequencies and the aforementioned 10 polymorphic blood group systems with 27 determinations. Given only one blood group difference, we thus expect to detect 90% of the cases where a single unit of heterologous blood has been transfused, 99% of the cases where two units have been used and 99.9% of the cases where three units have been transfused. For two blood group differences to be detected, the corresponding probabilities are approx. 81%, 96% and 99% respectively. Test procedure: The procedure for selecting the athletes to be tested was similar to the previous methods: the four top finishers and two other competitors at random. Both blood and urine sample were taken. The blood was taken from an antecubital venipuncture by either the blood drawing technicians provided by the doping control or by the athlete's physician. Two 3 cc (A and B) purple tops were drawn. The sample was also analyzed for erythropoietin (exogenous erythropoietin was added to the banned list at the FIS Conference in June 1988) and blood count. The plans were: if the value of the ratio of hemoglobin and erythropoietin was 3 standard deviations from the population mean the data would be submitted to international experts for interpretation. This report was to be sent to the FIS Council who should decide on appropriate actions to be taken. Results: The tests conducted turned out to be of great importance for the sport of skiing. No heterologous blood was detected among the 66 samples analyzed. The positive attitude of the athletes, their leaders, the organizing committee and the FIS made this side of the 1989 World Championships hopefully a hallmark of pure sport. There were no rumours about doping in these World Championships. The test methods for homologous blood are to be further elaborated by laboratory experts. The results from this part of the blood test showed, however, no result close to the limit of suspect values for homologous blood doping in any direction. The values of hemoglobin, Hct and erythropoietin were all over within a normal range. The possibility to carry out quantitative analysis in the future of banned drugs, rather than only qualitative detection in urine tests, is one further very important advantage of taking blood samples for doping control. In summary: The testing accomplished its three goals: 1. to detect the use of heterologous blood, 2. to gain experience with blood tests as a method of doping control and 3. to increase the risk of the athletes getting caught for use of unethical alterations of oxygen carrying capacity. Verf.-Referat