Detecting testosterone administration.

Controlling drug abuse in sports requires effective means to detect the administration of banned substances. For synthetic anabolic androgemc steroids, the identification of the parent steroid, or one or more diagnostic metabolites, in a sample of the athlete's urine is evidence that the offense of drug abuse has taken place. For substances that are produced endogenously, the mere presence of the substance in the urine obviously cannot constitute proof of an offense. Nevertheless, sport authorities may wish to ban the administration of the substance; this is the situation with respect to testoster-one (T).' Various approaches to prove administration have been considered within the practical constraint that only a single untimed urine sample is available for the screening test. The notion of setting a concentration cutoff for urinary T was abandoned because the range of values in normal subjects is very wide and the cutoff would have to be set so large that the ability of the test to identify users would be poor and therefore unfair to athletes who do not use P. A more realistic approach would be a ratio of substances that are independent of urine flow. Since the early 1980s, the two candidate methods for this involve determining the ratios of T to epitestosterone (E) (1) and of T to luteinizing hormone (LH) (2). The former is based on the findings that T administration results in an increase in the TIE ratio (1,2), and that administration of labeled T does not result in substantial incorporation of the label into E (1). The latter is based on endocrine control mechanisms that lead to a decrease in LH consequent to use of anabolic androgemc steroids; however, the TILH ratio is not practical for urine samples from females, who are permitted to suppress LH with oral contraceptives. Definitive methods such as detecting a synthetic T ester in blood or finding an unnatural '2C1'3C isotope ratio are being investigated. In recognition of this situation, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and many national and international sport authorities have worded their rules to state not simply that T administration is banned but that the T/E ratio may not exceed 6. When T was banned in 1982, the IOC rule (3) was'.. . the administration of testosterone or the use of any other manipulation having the result of increasing the ratio in urine of test-osterone-epitestosterone to above 6. " The most recent IOC rule …