Hormones as Performance-Enhancing Agents

Abstract

Success in sports is often defined by winning, which drives some athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs to gain an advantage over opponents. The use of doping agents in sports has a long history, especially over the last years, secondary to scandals and controversy. Athletes and the general public are now more aware and educated about this issue. The World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) mission is to lead a collaborative worldwide campaign for doping-free sport. A list of doping substances and methods banned in sports is published yearly by WADA (http://www.wada-ama.org. Accessed 17 July 2018) [1]. A substance or method might be included on the list if it fulfills at least two of the following criteria: enhances sports performance, represents a risk to the athlete’s health, or violates the spirit of sports. The strategy to detect such drugs may be relatively easy as in anabolic steroids and erythropoietin (EPO) (urine) but sometimes is more difficult as in human growth hormone (rhGH) and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) (blood). The aim of this review is to discuss the rationale, physiology, performance enhancement, adverse events, and detection of doping in sports with the endocrine system active agents: insulin, rhGH, rhIGF-1, EPO, and anabolic-androgenic steroids. There are many review articles presenting the details of analytic techniques; therefore, we shall just outline the general strategy for detection of classes of agents and some specific drugs.