Urine transport in doping analysis: scientifically proven unacceptable

November 2nd 2009 - In the scientific magazine Accreditation and Quality Assurance, a scientific article has been published from the hand of two world class professors in microbiology. The article proves that the urine transport method, which is currently used by WADA, is scientifically and morally unacceptable. The WADA method of slow, uncooled transport is cheap, but it does not at all guarantee that samples do not degrade. In fact, there is a substantial risk of false positives or false negatives because of wrong transport conditions.

It has already been demonstrated that Simon's urine took 5 days (uncooled) to reach the doping lab in Cologne. The urine has arrived microbially degraded and this has resulted in his astma medication giving a false positive result in the doping test. The abstract of the article is shown below.

The importance of cooling of urine samples for doping analysis

Storing and transporting of urine samples for doping analysis, as performed by the anti-doping organizations associated with the World Anti-Doping Agency, does not include a specific protocol for cooled transport from the place of urine sampling to the doping laboratory, although low cost cooling facilities can easily be made available. As a result, microbial and thermal degradation of the chemical substances in the urine may occur, which may lead to false negative or false positive results in the subsequent doping analysis. This scientifically and morally unacceptable practice is still maintained in spite of publications demonstrating that immediate cooling is an absolute requirement. Given the enormous societal consequences of positive tests, the lack of a controllable chain of custody during transport should be outlawed. This paper proposes a simple method, based on immediate cooling and cooled transport, which can easily be implemented in developed countries at low cost.

The link to the full article is:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/0vj85167j61423m3/fulltext.pdf

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