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Current limitations of the Athlete's Biological Passport use in sports

  • Fabian Sanchis-Gomar , Vladimir E. Martinez-Bello , Mari Carmen Gomez-Cabrera EMAIL logo and Jose Viña
Published/Copyright: July 27, 2011
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Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine
From the journal Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine Volume 49 Issue 9

Abstract

The Athletes Biological Passport (ABP) has received both criticisms and support during this year. In a recent issue of The Lancet, Michael Wozny considered that the use of the ABP makes it more difficult to take banned substances and that it was successfully used against the Italian elite cyclist Franco Pellizotti. After that, Italy's anti-doping tribunal considered that there was not enough evidence to prove manipulation of his own blood profile in Pellizotti's case. However, the UCI appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) that sanctioned Pellizotti with a suspension of 2 years. Since its implementation, some problems have emerged. From 2010 to date, a large number of reports regarding the stability of the blood variables used to determine the ABP have been published, showing mixed results. This study considers that there is a risk of misinterpreting the physiological variations of the hematological parameters determined by the anti-doping authorities in the ABP. The analytical variability due to exercise training and competitions and/or to different metabolic energy demands, hypoxia treatments, etc. could lead to an increase in false-positives when using the ABP with the dramatic consequences that they might cause in major sports events like the forthcoming London Olympic Games. Moreover, the ABP characteristics, procedures, thresholds, or individual determination of reference ranges, abnormal out-comes, strikes, “how the profile differs from what is expected in clean athletes” should be clearly stated and explained in a new public technical document to avoid misunderstandings and to promote transparency.

Keywords: analytical variability; blood variables; endurance exercise; hematocrit; hemoglobin; reticulocytes
Corresponding author: Mari Carmen Gomez-Cabrera, PhD, Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Valencia, Av. Blasco Ibañez, 15, Valencia, 46010 Spain Phone: +(34) 96 386 46 50, Fax: +(34) 96 386 46 42
Received: 2011-1-20
Accepted: 2011-4-11
Published Online: 2011-07-27
Published in Print: 2011-09-01

©2011 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston

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  2. Athlete's biological passport: to test or not to test?
  3. Review
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  6. The function of oxalic acid in the human metabolism
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  8. Limits and pitfalls of Athlete's Biological Passport
  9. The Athlete Biological Passport from the perspective of an anti-doping organization
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  11. Genetics of infectious diseases: hidden etiologies and common pathways
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  26. Determinants of oxidative stress related to gender: relevance of age and smoking habit
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  29. Development of candidate reference reagent for HIV-1 RNA and comparison analysis for different HIV-1 RNA quantitative assay
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https://doi.org/10.1515/CCLM.2011.609
Keywords for this article
analytical variability; blood variables; endurance exercise; hematocrit; hemoglobin; reticulocytes

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Editorial
  2. Athlete's biological passport: to test or not to test?
  3. Review
  4. Prognostic value of cystatin C in acute coronary syndromes: enhancer of atherosclerosis and promising therapeutic target
  5. Opinion Papers
  6. The function of oxalic acid in the human metabolism
  7. Current limitations of the Athlete's Biological Passport use in sports
  8. Limits and pitfalls of Athlete's Biological Passport
  9. The Athlete Biological Passport from the perspective of an anti-doping organization
  10. Perspectives
  11. Genetics of infectious diseases: hidden etiologies and common pathways
  12. Guidelines and Recommendations
  13. IFCC primary reference procedures for the measurement of catalytic activity concentrations of enzymes at 37 °C. Part 9: Reference procedure for the measurement of catalytic concentration of alkaline phosphatase
  14. Genetics and Molecular Diagnostics
  15. A template for mutational data analysis of the CFTR gene
  16. High resolution melting analysis to genotype the most common variants in the HFE gene
  17. General Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine
  18. Bayesian analysis of an international ELISA comparability study
  19. Inflammatory markers in preeclamptic patients
  20. Pre-analytical effects of different lithium heparin plasma separation tubes in the routine clinical chemistry laboratory
  21. Pre-acquisition system assessment of the Sysmex® Coagulation System CS-2100i and comparison with end-user verification; a model for the regional introduction of new analysers and methods
  22. Evaluation of a commercially available rapid urinary porphobilinogen test
  23. Reference Values and Biological Variations
  24. Reference intervals and age and gender dependency for arterial blood gases and electrolytes in adults
  25. Within-subject biological variation of glucose and HbA1c in healthy persons and in type 1 diabetes patients
  26. Determinants of oxidative stress related to gender: relevance of age and smoking habit
  27. Soluble ST2 is not independently associated with androgen and estrogen status in healthy males and females
  28. Infectious Diseases
  29. Development of candidate reference reagent for HIV-1 RNA and comparison analysis for different HIV-1 RNA quantitative assay
  30. Prognostic value of serum angiotensin-converting enzyme activity for outcome of community-acquired pneumonia
  31. The evaluation of colloidal gold immunochromatographic assay (GICA) for rapid diagnosis of influenza A disease
  32. Cardiovascular Disease
  33. N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide in early and advanced phases of obesity
  34. Vaspin plasma concentrations and mRNA expressions in patients with stable and unstable angina pectoris
  35. Prospective study of first stroke in relation to plasma homocysteine and MTHFR 677C>T and 1298A>C genotypes and haplotypes – evidence for an association with hemorrhagic stroke
  36. Letters to the Editor
  37. Evaluation of the analytical performance of the Beckman Coulter AU680 automated analytical system based on quality specifications for allowable performance derived from biological variation
  38. Collagen peptides, interstitial remodelling and sudden cardiac death in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
  39. Erratum
  40. Modified phosphatidylserine-dependent antiprothrombin ELISA enables identification of patients negative for other antiphospholipid antibodies and also detects low avidity antibodies
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