Doping in Sports- Past, Present and Future

Doping is widely known as the use of banned substances and practices by sports personnel particularly athletes in an attempt to improve sporting performances. There are at least two essential reasons to support the fight against doping: the depth of corruption on the ‘fair competition’the sine qua non of all sporting events, and the potential harmful effects on athletes. To ensure equal competitive conditions and to protect the health of athletes, the International Olympic Committee, WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) and International Sports Federations have accepted use of performance-enhancing substances and methods by competitors directly or indirectly as ‘doping’, and have forbidden them. Nevertheless, the desire to win for acclaim and/or associated benefits drives athletes to misuse these drugs and methods. When current antidoping programmes were developed, the most frequently used doping agents were xenobiotics, such as adrenergic stimulants and anabolic steroids that are readily detectable in urine with the use of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. As effective and stringent laws came into effect, use of traditional doping agents were restrained but some athletes turned to other means to improve performance, including blood doping and use of recombinant peptide hormones such as Erythropoietin and insulin-like Growth factor-1. And hence highlighted the potential misuse of this technology and ‘gene doping’ .With progress in genetic engineering, many other genes with this potential for abuse will be discovered and tried subsequently. For this reason, it is important to promote research and to develop timely legal regulations in the field of gene doping.