EPO Drug Testing

EPO, or Erythropoietin, is a hormone that is produced by the peritubular capillary cells in the kidney and liver. Among its various biological functions, it regulates and controls red blood cell production. This blood doping method is most popular among athletes in such sports as running, cycling, skiing, rowing, biathlon, and others. EPO is suspected to be commonly used back in 90s, but there was no test, blood or urine, that could test for it with a 100 percent certainty. There was an argument that the closed systems that were used by anti-doping agencies did not allow any scientific or statistical validation of the tests. Blood tests that were used only as “indirect” tests to screen and determine whether a urine EPO test was needed. The only information that blood test could give is to confirm that an athlete had an unusual blood profile that could have been caused by the use of Erythropoietin or some other blood boosting drug. And only then the expensive EPO urine test could be performed to determine whether or not the substance in question was the cause of abnormality. Unlike all the other drug tests, EPO blood test is cheaper that the urine test, an unlike all the other blood test – this one was not accurate.

The first precise test for Erythropoietin was developed only in 2000 by French scientists and then endorsed world-wide. They found a way to determine whether or not Erythropoietin in the blood is exogenous by a slight difference between the two proteins – in this new test a two-dimensional gel electrophoresis is used.