With accusations flying in all directions and all the talk about having no tests for EPO...well I've been thinking a little. Maybe too much....but here are some thoughts....

Since EPO is naturally occurring hormone in the body making it very had to detect, can't sporting organizations push drug manufacturers to add detectable non-active ingredients to the mix? After all, their products are being used illegally in sporting events.

Maybe this is the wrong question for this board, but who is making this stuff? I searched around for erythropoietin and found the Eprex and Procrit names...Jansen pharma and Ortho pharma.....which I think is one giant name Jansen-Ortho now anyway. Who else? Can you make this stuff fairly easy, bathtub chemist style? ....If not, adding a detectable ingredient would certainly add difficulty to anyone attempting to use it.

Or am I horribly off on this one....

I'd just like to know that this sport I like so much is honest and clean.

then they wouldn't sell as much of the stuff

With accusations flying in all directions and all the talk about having no tests for EPO...well I've been thinking a little. Maybe too much....but here are some thoughts....

Since EPO is naturally occurring hormone in the body making it very had to detect, can't sporting organizations push drug manufacturers to add detectable non-active ingredients to the mix? After all, their products are being used illegally in sporting events.

Maybe this is the wrong question for this board, but who is making this stuff? I searched around for erythropoietin and found the Eprex and Procrit names...Jansen pharma and Ortho pharma.....which I think is one giant name Jansen-Ortho now anyway. Who else? Can you make this stuff fairly easy, bathtub chemist style? ....If not, adding a detectable ingredient would certainly add difficulty to anyone attempting to use it.

Or am I horribly off on this one....

I'd just like to know that this sport I like so much is honest and clean.

You are pretty off. EPO is not naturally ocurring. Hematopoeitin (sp?) is the hormone, EPO(epogen) is the synthetic analog. Sport doping just is not important enough to warrant changing a drug formulation; the dialysis and chemo patients (where the money comes from) would not appreciate it. The test for it is reasonably sensitive, but EPO's half life is only ~24 hours at best; so the answer may be to test suspect atheletes on a daily basis for the month prior to an event. If positive ban for life and strip all awards.
Given about 400 euros per test = 12,000 euros per athlete. For the whole tour it would close in on 2 million for everyone. They spent 1.4 million on all testing combined last year for the tour.

Cool....That's the kinda info I like to see. I don't know much at all about it.....

Actually, erythropoietin is the naturally occuring glycoprotein, while epoetin alfa (tradenames procrit and epogen in the US) is the synthetic, recombinant form. According to the prescribing info, the synthetic version has the EXACT same amino acid sequence as natural erythropoietin, and has the same biologic activity.

There is a test which can distinguish natural erythropoietin from the synthetic version on the basis of differing electrophoretic properties (probably due to differences in protein glycosylation). The limitation of the test is that epoetin has a short half life, and is not detectable in the urine after more than a few days. Thus, adding a marker of some sort is pointless. Furthermore, I have no doubt that changing epoetin in any way would warrant another several rounds of testing in order to prove its safety and efficacy-- this would cost the pharmaceutical company many millions of dollars, and further drive up the cost of healthcare for dialysis and cancer patients.

There is another method which takes into account various blood parameters to determine the likelihood of whether or not an athlete is currently abusing EPO or has recently used EPO. This method is able to detect EPO usage up to roughly 20-25 days after usage, though the need to maintain an acceptably low false positive rate necessitates a relatively low test sensitivity.

I totally agree that current testing methods are unable to conclusively prove an athlete's innocence, and are woefully inadequate at picking up cheaters. As you suggested, the only way to definitively do this would be to test athletes frequently on a regular basis. This would have the dual benefit of being able to detect cheating, and also provide a reference for the purpose of proving the innocence of an athlete who was unlucky enough to get a false positive result. As you suggest, though, the cost would be astronomical! The solution: beats the heck out of me.

The tour and the uci have implicitly agreed to accept the use of epo. By allowing for hematocrit levels of 50%. This was an arbitrary number assigned based on the highest naturally occurring hematocrit levels. These levels are not acheived naturally under normal conditions. And the riders are not spending their nights sleeping in hypoxic tents. The sheer logistics of setting up a tent in a new room room every night for a team of 9 riders would be a nightmare. Especially that at the end of a gruelling three week tour you would expect that the hematocrit level would drop just from the toll on the body, but the same 50% hematocrit level is accepted.