RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Steroid profiles of professional soccer players: an international comparative study
JF British Journal of Sports Medicine
JO Br J Sports Med
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and British Association of Sport and Exercise Medicine
SP 1126
OP 1130
DO 10.1136/bjsm.2008.056242
VO 43
IS 14
A1 E Strahm
A1 P-E Sottas
A1 C Schweizer
A1 M Saugy
A1 J Dvorak
A1 C Saudan
YR 2009
UL http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/43/14/1126.abstract
AB Background and objectives: Urinary steroid profiling is used in doping controls to detect testosterone abuse. 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. A deletion polymorphism in the UGT2B17 gene was demonstrated to account for a significant part of the interindividual variability in the T/E between Caucasians and Asians. Here, the variability of urinary steroid profiles was examined in a widely heterogeneous cohort of professional soccer players.Method: The steroid profile of 57 Africans, 32 Asians, 50 Caucasians and 32 Hispanics was determined by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry.Results: Significant differences have been observed between all ethnic groups. After 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). Finally, another polymorphism could be hypothesised in Asians based on specific concentration ratio of 5α-/5β-androstane-3α,17β-diol in urine.Conclusion: These results demonstrate that a unique and non-specific threshold to evidence testosterone misuse is not fit for purpose. 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. Finally, additional genotyping studies should be undertaken to determine whether the remaining unexplained disparities have an environmental or a genetic origin.