Poster Presentation The Joint Annual Scientific Meetings of the Endocrine Society of Australia and the Society for Reproductive Biology 2017

Overview of emerging performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs) of concern in Australia (#175)

Lance Brooker 1 , Vanessa Agon 1 , Janelle Grainger 1 , Angelo Lisi 1 , Catrin Goebel 1
  1. National Measurement Institute, North Ryde, NSW, Australia

As the only World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) accredited laboratory in the Oceania region, the Australian Sports Drug Testing Laboratory (ASDTL, part of the National Measurement Institute, NMI) is responsible for the doping control testing of athlete’s blood and urine samples for performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs). Additionally, ASDTL is tasked with the testing of non-athlete samples originating from various government agencies/bodies such as law enforcement, correctional facilities, military services, and forensic toxicology, hospital and pathology laboratories. As new substances are added to the WADA Prohibited List,1 testing methods are updated and re-validated, sometimes requiring the implementation of new forms of analytical instrumentation or methodologies. ASDTL is constantly reviewing the availability of potential and novel PIEDs in Australia, and takes a proactive approach with regards to research and method development. In this poster we will give an overview of some of the emerging PIEDs of concern in Australia. Many substances are yet to undergo proper human clinical trials but are freely available to order via ‘legitimate’ internet retailers based here in Australia (as opposed to illegal ‘black’ market retailers of traditional anabolic steroids or illicit substances). Typical PIEDs substance classes such as anabolic agents, anti-estrogens and weight-loss stimulants are packaged and sold as ‘supplements’, though the banned active ingredient is freely disclosed on the label. Of concern is the rise in popularity of so called ‘exercise-in-a-pill’ type metabolic modulators, promoted to be both muscle building and fat-burning, but without any proven safety guidelines for human use. Peptide based PIEDs are being heavily promoted through social media but seemingly require a medical professional to write prescriptions for compounding pharmacies to fill. In all cases, the increasing ease of availability should be a concern for both anti-doping and public health authorities.