The next time you’re watching that baseball player hit a mammoth home run or that defensive linesman crushing the quarterback, or even that cyclist sprinting up an almost vertical hill well ahead of the competition, don’t only wonder if the athlete is on steroids, but also wonder if he or she has ever been on steroids. A new paper recently published in The Journal of Physiology written by researchers from the University of Oslo suggests that exposure to performing enhancing drugs (PEDs) may have a memory effect, i.e., the drug may produce its intended effect long after it is initially taken. This is in direct contrast to the current thinking that PEDs lose their effects shortly after administration. These findings can have serious implications with regard to drug testing policies.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is the international organization that works independently to provide guidelines and guidance regarding doping and PEDs. They have found the work done at Oslo to be interesting enough to provide them with a grant to study the effect in humans. Currently, the WADA code contains a maximum exclusion time of two years.
The sports world is now riddled with accusations and innuendos regarding the use of PEDs by athletes. This has tainted the pure enjoyment of the sport as a venue for the highly dedicated and naturally talented athletes to practice their trade. Athletes are under scrutiny when their performance is beyond their routine norm. The recent performance of David Ortiz (aka “Big Papi”) of the Boston Red Sox in the 2013 World Series (.733 World Series batting average versus .287 lifetime) brings questions to the surface – did Big Papi “naturally” step up to the Fall Classic limelight or, are there other circumstances that provide him with an increase of over two and a half times his overall average?
So, let’s return to the University of Oslo study. The researchers exposed mice to steroids for a short duration. This gave rise to an increase in muscle mass. Remarkably, three months after administration their muscles continued to grow.
Their study results indicate that a brief exposure to PEDs produces an increase in muscle mass and this increase continues long after the drug has been withdrawn. Although their experiments were conducted with mice, they feel that their results may be applicable to humans.
The findings of the Oslo team bring up an interesting argument. Should athletes proven to have illegally used PEDs at any time in their past be banned for life due to the fact that their effects are long lasting? This debate is just in its infancy but will no doubt grow if similar findings are observed in human subjects.
Currently under Major League Baseball (MLB) rules, players testing positive for PEDs receive a 50 game suspension for the first offense, 100 games for the second offense, and a lifetime ban after a positive test for a third time. Mike Trout, the Los Angeles Angels slugger, is very vocal about the punishment he feels is proper for PED users. He thinks that they should be out for life and feels disheartened by the fact that he gives his best effort every day and then reads about the twelve players that tested positive during the 2013 season and received fifty game suspensions – many of whom he has played against. He feels good, however, that MLB caught them and that abusers are being actively pursued.
The debate continues regarding PEDs, now fueled with new findings that add to the overall arguments. Should those “super-human” performances sports fans have been accustomed to seeing be watched with a bit of skepticism? This subject bears following.
