Better be suspicious if it ends in -ol, -diol or -stene!

As has been already written down on a number of occasions, several studies have been conducted, starting from the early 2000s, which drew attention to the appearance of banned substances in products intended for athletes. It was noticed by doping control laboratories during doping tests carried out towards the end of the 1990s that the number of positive cases due to the use of nandrolone showed an increase compared to previous years.

This was interesting, because by then it was widely known that the use of nandrolone can be detected in the urine samples of athletes much longer than the use of other steroids. In many cases, it was argued during the investigation of doping offenses that a product intended for athletes was used by the athlete, and not a prohibited substance.

Products containing so-called prohormones had been free to be marketed in the USA from 1996 until 2004. They mainly contained prohormones of nandrolone and testosterone, which were among the anabolic agents of the prohibited list. Several studies had been written about the analysis of products not containing prohormones [1, 2].

An interesting finding of one study was that more than one quarter of the products of prohormone producing companies that had been declared prohormone-free were still contaminated by the compounds in question. Only 10% of the products of companies not producing prohormones contained these compounds. Use of the contaminated products by the athletes could result in positive doping test results.

Today, there are still manufacturers who distribute products that contain substances which are on the prohibited list. When buying dietary supplements or products intended for athletes, always study the product label carefully.

Always be suspicious if the names of the ingredients end in -ol, -diol or -stene, and consult an expert before consuming the product.

[1] H. Geyer, et al., Analysis of Non-hormonal Nutritional Supplements for Anabolic-Androgenic Steroids – Results of an International Study, Int J Sports Med 25(2): 124-9. 2004.             

[2] Frans T. Delbeke, et al., Prohormones and sport, Journal of Steroid Biochemistry & Molecular Biology 83 (2003) 245–251