Testosterone 101

[BumbleBeeDave]

This story is from VeloNews.com . . .

BBD

__________________________________________________ _

Testosterone 101
By The Associated Press
This report filed July 28, 2006

Questions of possible use of a banned steroid by Tour de France champion Floyd Landis were raised because of a urine test that spots elevated levels of performance-enhancing testosterone.

The test detects both testosterone and a related steroid called epitestosterone, which is not performance-enhancing. Both are produced by the body and are also made in synthetic form.

Landis's Phonak team said his urine sample showed "an unusual level of testosterone/epitestosterone" when he was tested after his amazing come-from-behind performance in the 17th stage of the race on July 20. The usual ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone is about 1 to 1 or 2 to 1, said Gary Wadler, a physician and member of the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Suspicions of improper steroid use arise when the ratio climbs above four parts testosterone over one part epitestosterone, Wadler said. Officials have not said what ratio Landis's test showed.

Andrew Pipe, a physician and medical and scientific adviser to the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sports in Ottawa, says that synthetic testosterone is normally injected, but taking it in the middle of an athletic competition would have little effect in boosting performance.

"Anabolic steroids, of which testosterone is the granddaddy, can have a central nervous system effect," he said. "But anabolic steroids largely work by increasing the capacity for training and increasing the bulk and tolerance of muscles. That isn't going to happen in a few hours.

"The effect of the testosterone is not going to be experienced unless there's a very significant training endeavor associated with it as well."

Pipe cautioned that the initial uproar over the high levels of testosterone detected in Landis's system may prove to be premature, depending on the outcome of additional testing that will have to be carried out before a definitive judgment is made. Taken by itself, he said, an elevated testosterone finding in the rider's A urine sample is enough to raise suspicions, but it does not automatically implicate the athlete as a doping cheat.

"I think it's very important that people take a deep breath and understand the implications and significance of what's being reported," Pipe said last night. He said that some men have naturally high levels of testosterone. For this reason, Pipe said it is imperative that the levels found in Landis during the Tour de France be compared with testosterone levels that have been detected in drug tests that have likely been carried out in the past on all the riders, not just Landis.

If no such comparable data is available, Pipe said, the rider will have to be tested again in the future. For this reason, Pipe said he was surprised that the findings from Landis's A sample have been made public. "The last thing I would want is for the suspected athlete to know that we're on to the fact that he or she may have an unusually high TE ratio and that we may have to administer further tests."

[BumbleBeeDave]

I think the keys for me are that people are certainly NOT going to " . . . take a deep breath and understand the implications and significance of what's being reported," as this guy suggests. In the current climate, huge numbers of people are simpley going to assume positive=guilty.

The next thing this story made me consider was . . . French race, American winner, French lab, preliminary and inconclusive results leaked, which cause a media uproar and great PR damage to the American rider concerned.

Haven't we seen this somewhere before . . . ?

BBD

[theprep]

Fox Sports reported that the acceptable testosterone/epitestosterone level just recently changed:

"Under World Anti-Doping Agency regulations, a ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone greater than 4:1 is considered a positive result and subject to investigation. The threshold was recently lowered from 6:1. The most likely natural ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone in humans is 1:1."

Floyd's been racing for a while, he should be GRANDFATHERED in with the 6:1 IMHO.

Is it true that every rider busted for elevated testosterone to date has been exonerated?

[Erik.Lazdins]

Peter Drucker said (and I'm paraphrasing) that when explaining something that is going to be a hot topic of much discussion, that the explanation needs to be done in the simplest methods so that everybody understands and trusts it.
This for me is the problem. I can understand that a test reported a "bad" number but...

1. Is the test 100% reliable? (no false positives)
2. Is it universally understood and accepted?
3. Will Floyd's defense be simple?

I'm afraid the answer for all of these may be no and as a result very few may get a feeling that the truth is known.

[Frustration]

Wasn't Floyd's first test at 7 to 1 anyway?

[BumbleBeeDave]

. . . from my own research. It's something that I've read as part of the coverage of all this.

I don't think this is so much a matter of someone being "grandfathered" in by the rules so much as by their previous record from testing. Landis has won three major races already this year even before the Tour. There should be a more than adequate body of test results already available that should let investigators easily see if Landis was already prone to a higher than normal testosterone ratio.

I think this is partciularly significant because the exact ratio result of the "positive" test has not been revealed. If those earlier tests reveal that his normal personal ratio was, say, 3.9 or 3.9:1, and the result of THIS test that came up "positive" is only 4.1 or 4.2:1--just barely over the line--then that means a WHOLE lot.

My worry here is that there are person or persons who know full well that the original accusation itself is what will do the damage, ruining both Floyd's victory and his earning potential as a result of his victory. The later revelations about the B sample being negative or his normal ratio being just barely over the line will be ignored. It's just an attempt to smear him.

BBD

[gdw]

I accept pro cycling for what it is but agree with your views concerning the french lab and press as well as the tour organizers and am surprised that it wasn't discussed in some of the other threads. They never got the goods on Armstrong so Landis was an obvious target. Phonak should have hired a spin master prior to the race to deal with the inevitable french attack. His handlers also should have been prepared for the backlash after his amazing comeback and taken their own samples for independent analysis.

[MartyE]

I'm not going to comment on the french lab, WADA or anything
but what I've read(heard) is that Floyd's E/T ratio was 11:1 but
conversely his testosterone levels were low and his Epitestosterone
level was "very low" thus the ratio.
The evidence (as reported and not verified) seems to suggest that
he wasn't using testosterone patch or injection, but that something
is not kosher (atmo) with his readings.

marty

[malcolm]

My experience with anabolics comes from strength sports (powerlifting) but I can't imagine what benefit anabolic steroids would provide in the middle of a long term endurance event unless somehow it keeps you from canabalizing or breaking down your own muscle. They certainly wont make you go from bonk to superstar overnight. I think boston drunk summed it up the other day. The playing field is most likely level and he slayed them all. I hope this goes away unless there is a sport wide blow up, and Landis is a stud no matter what any ratio is.

[Ottrott]

"Another test, which analyzes carbon isotopes, provides much more definitive evidence that an athlete has used external testosterone, according to Don Catlin, director of the Olympic drug testing laboratory at UCLA.

The French newspaper L'Equipe reported in Friday's editions that the Olympic anti-doping lab in Paris that analyzed Landis' sample also performed the carbon isotope test and that it clearly showed the presence of external testosterone."

[J.Greene]

I accept pro cycling for what it is but agree with your views concerning the french lab and press as well as the tour organizers and am surprised that it wasn't discussed in some of the other threads. They never got the goods on Armstrong so Landis was an obvious target. Phonak should have hired a spin master prior to the race to deal with the inevitable french attack. His handlers also should have been prepared for the backlash after his amazing comeback and taken their own samples for independent analysis.

I don't buy the argument that the french are out to get Floyd because of Lance. I think everyone appreciated the way floyd won the tour. A buddy who was in paris on Sunday said the french absolutely were supportive of Floyd. It was very evident on the Champs that day.

JG

[gdw]

I'm not talking about the fans but the press and organizers. Performance handling drugs are a part of pro cycling but L'Equipe and the folks running the Tour and labs are sleazy b******s and not to be trusted.

[BumbleBeeDave]

. . . the French to smear Floyd. All it takes is one or several people with axes to grind who are in a position to successfully grind them, whether against Americans in general or against Phonak in particular. To me, this marks the third incident--after Hamilton and his teammate's blood doping results--where the Phonak positive results seemed to come out of nowhere.

I'm normally definitely not a conspiracy theorist, but stuff like this DOES make me wonder.

BBD

[Louis]

I'm not going to comment on the french lab, WADA or anything
but what I've read(heard) is that Floyd's E/T ratio was 11:1 but
conversely his testosterone levels were low and his Epitestosterone
level was "very low" thus the ratio.
The evidence (as reported and not verified) seems to suggest that
he wasn't using testosterone patch or injection, but that something
is not kosher (atmo) with his readings.

This (http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/07/landis_case_may.html) USA Today story says the same thing about the ratio:

Meanwhile, ESPN cycling analyst John Eustice continues to insist, citing anonymous sources, that Landis' testosterone was normal and that the problem is his low epitestosterone. Eustice interpreted Landis' puzzling request that his case not be "treated as a doping case" by noting that the test shows only an unusual ratio of two naturally occurring substances, not that he took anything artificial.

The ESPN analyst said he believes the "B" sample will give the same result as the "A" sample but that Landis will be exonerated on appeal to international arbitrators.

[J.Greene]

I'm not talking about the fans but the press and organizers. Performance handling drugs are a part of pro cycling but L'Equipe and the folks running the Tour and labs are sleazy b******s and not to be trusted.

How are the folks that run the labs sleezy? Have they ever been shown to have an agenda? Have any lab personell come under any suspicion? Jean Marie and Co are certaintly open to criticism, but i think including the labs is kind of like tarring them all with the same brush.

JG

[Ginger]

Considering the guy is on thyroid meds, perhaps a bit of the rest of his endocrin system is messed up...

Just a thought.

[Andreas]

Considering the guy is on thyroid meds, perhaps a bit of the rest of his endocrin system is messed up...

Just a thought.

No. Reasonable thought though. He is a bit hypothyroid, takes some L-Thyroxine - that does NOT mess up his endocrine system, certainly not increase his testosterone level by 400%.
T/E ratio is normally one.
FL was obviously greater than 4.
Test is reliable.
Very few false positives with this particular test. Chances for B to show the same results are > 99.5%.

Note: I am not commenting if he doped or not, but I know the test and a few things about the endocrine system...

[Brian]

First off… I have no idea if Floyd is guilty, and I really hope he isn’t. I find it hard to believe he would have taken something and STILL chose to win Stage 17 knowing he WOULD be tested.

That being said, if Floyd has a naturally high level of testosterone that would almost always produce a T/E ration greater than 4:1, wouldn’t he have already known it? Just in 2006 alone he has been tested plenty of times: Tour of California (tested for overall and TT win), the Tour of Georgia (tested for overall and TT win), Paris-Nice (tested for overall), TdF (yellow jersey holder and tested after stages 12, 13, 16, 19, 20) – not to mention all the other tests from his previous wins, random in-completion tests and out-of-competition tests. Granted the T/E ratio for being clean has been reduced to 4:1 from 6:1 for only a year or so, but that’s still plenty of tests where Floyd should have previously come up greater than 4:1 if he has naturally high levels of Testosterone.

So… How does it happen that someone with an unusually high level of naturally occurring testosterone suddenly finds out after dozens of tests that he is above the legal limit? Wouldn’t this normal, physiologically high T/E ratio been discovered after presumably failing all the other tests? It just seems reasonable to assume that if he failed the test after Stage 17 for being greater than 4:1, and being greater than 4:1 is a normal level for him, then he would have been greater than 4:1 in all the other tests.

If one accepts this logic, there appears to be only two reasonable conclusions: 1) the initial test of the A sample was bogus and the result was incorrect, or 2) Floyd juiced up the night before Stage 17.

[Big Dan]

Brian makes a good point....I think he went for broke.
Sorry guys, but I'm leaning towards the "juice"......... :p
btw, I also think he'll get away with it....

[slowgoing]

This (http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2006/07/landis_case_may.html) USA Today story says the same thing about the ratio:

Meanwhile, ESPN cycling analyst John Eustice continues to insist, citing anonymous sources, that Landis' testosterone was normal and that the problem is his low epitestosterone. Eustice interpreted Landis' puzzling request that his case not be "treated as a doping case" by noting that the test shows only an unusual ratio of two naturally occurring substances, not that he took anything artificial.

The ESPN analyst said he believes the "B" sample will give the same result as the "A" sample but that Landis will be exonerated on appeal to international arbitrators.


Sounds like the test was designed to catch people with high testosterone levels. If his are normal, but he just has low epitestosterone, is the test result meaningful?

What would cause a person to have low epitestosterone levels?

[gdw]

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the French national doping laboratory in Châtenay-Malabry leak info to L'Equipe during the last Lance EPO drama?

[Johny]

"Another test, which analyzes carbon isotopes, provides much more definitive evidence that an athlete has used external testosterone, according to Don Catlin, director of the Olympic drug testing laboratory at UCLA.

The French newspaper L'Equipe reported in Friday's editions that the Olympic anti-doping lab in Paris that analyzed Landis' sample also performed the carbon isotope test and that it clearly showed the presence of external testosterone."

If this is true with both the A and B samples, then Landis is done imho.

[J.Greene]

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the French national doping laboratory in Châtenay-Malabry leak info to L'Equipe during the last Lance EPO drama?

I don't think so. I think that L'Equipe put several pieces of info together to expose lance. It was a Dr. at the UCI that leaked the lance info that connected him to the b samples. I am under the belief that the lab recieves the samples that are bar coded, and have no idea as to the identity of the samples. Blame UCI, L'Equipe, **** Pound. But to say the Lab has an agenda is a stretch. These people who do the work are well thought of professionals.

JG

[davep]

I don't know squat about any of this, so maybe someone with medical/scientific training can enlighten us (Johny?), but, if the reports are true that his testosterone level was NORMAL, but his epitestosterone was LOW, and therefore a high T/E ratio, woudn't that indicate that he didn't take any external T? What are the effects of low E? What would cause such an abnormally low E? If the labs can do a carbon isotope test that can more accurately show external T, why the he!! are they messing with a test that only shows it indirectly?

Also, aren't the samples supposed to be anonymous? And should't that anonymity apply until the B sample is tested?

As always in these cases there are more questions than answers, most because the information was released too soon (leaked?).

[gdw]

"These people who do the work are well thought of professionals."

I have no axe to grind and just think that Phonak and Floyd should have covered their butts after his comeback and taken their own samples to compare with any questionable test results. All it takes is one person. There are a number of police labs in this country, including a very prominent one in DC, who have fudged tests or made serious errors in the past so unfortunately one cannot always accept lab results as being 100 percent reliable.

I based my original comments about the lab on an old article from Velonews concerning the Armstrong leak. It might be incorrect.

Armstrong says L'Equipe misled him
By Charles Pelkey
news editor, VeloNews
This report filed September 15, 2005

Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong confirmed Thursday that he had granted permission to a L'Equipe journalist to scour doping records from the 1999 Tour de France, adding that he had been misled in doing so.

Armstrong held a press conference Thursday on the heels of comments by World Anti-Doping Agency president **** Pound, who said that the president of the Union Cycliste Internationale had released key documents linking the American cyclist's name to at least six positive doping tests from the 1999 Tour de France.

Armstrong acknowledged that he had granted L'Equipe reporter Damien Ressiot permission to review test documents from the '99 Tour but only because the reporter had told him that he was planning to do story on the Tour champion's therapeutic drug use exemptions.

Armstrong won the 1999 Tour de France after successfully battling back from testicular cancer that had spread to both his brain and lungs in 1996. Armstrong said Ressiot had approached him on the premise that he intended to counter a common assumption "in the European press.... that I had permission to use substances because of my illness."

"He (Ressiot) said, ‘I want to help you guys out. I just want to see one form,'" Armstrong added.

What Armstrong was unaware of at the time is that the French national doping laboratory in Châtenay-Malabry had already conducted retests of urine samples from the '99 Tour and L'Equipe reporters had somehow acquired the results and the numbers from the otherwise-anonymous samples.

And that is the point at which Armstrong attorney Bill Stapleton says the problem exists.

"The issue is that the codes were attached to anonymous samples. That's where the system broke down,'' said Stapleton.

Stapleton, a one-time member of the U.S. Olympic Committee's ethics panel, accused Pound of using "false and misleading statements to misdirect attention away from himself and his organization by alleging that the UCI was the leak to L'Equipe.''

Stapleton said the breakdown occurred prior to the UCI's release of seemingly unrelated documents, when Ressiot acquired the sample codes in the first place.

"The issue is that the codes were attached to anonymous samples," he said. "That's where the system broke down."

"Somebody directed that lab to leak samples with codes," Stapleton continued. "That's the question that needs to be answered before we start crucifying athletes without due process."

"It certainly wasn't WADA and certainly wasn't the French laboratory, which didn't have any of the names," Pound told reporters early on Thursday. "Neither of us had that information."

Stapleton said that he and Armstrong were well aware of the fact that the UCI had released a single document to Ressiot.

""We knew they gave (him) the form when they did it," he said. "Damien Ressiot wanted to do a story on Lance and whether he had medical exemptions on his forms. We were asked about it and we said okay.''

On August 23, L'Equipe reported with a front page headline "The Armstrong Lie" that six of Armstrong's urine samples tested positive for EPO during the 1999 race.

Armstrong said that he had not been aware of any plans to re-test samples from the '99 Tour, using technologies that were only accepted by the UCI in time for the 2001 Tour, the year of his third victory.

Nonetheless, Armstrong noted that "I am going to say this in just a few words. I have nothing to hide."

Armstrong said that he had once learned that when the French national soccer team won the 1998 World Cup in France, doping authorities destroyed players' samples within 24 hours. He didn't say where he got that information.

Armstong and Pound have had several very public exchanges, most notably when the Discovery team captain sent an open letter to the WADA chief castigating him for public comments regarding the doping issues facing cycling.

Is **** Pound a vindictive person who holds it in, holds grudges? Perhaps," mused Armstrong. "I was simply defending my profession and my passion."
__________________

[zap]

snipped


I have no axe to grind and just think that Phonak and Floyd should have covered their butts after his comeback and taken their own samples to compare with any questionable test results. All it takes is one person. There are a number of police labs in this country, including a very prominent one in DC, who have fudged tests or made serious errors in the past so unfortunately one cannot always accept lab results as being 100 percent reliable.


Heck, Greg Lemond was concerned about sabotage during the TdF back in '86.

[malcolm]

I want someone to explain how taking an anabolic steroid the night before an event can possibly provide any benefit, that just isn't the way I understand they work and I do have first hand experience with them in the strength training arena.

[J.Greene]

I think there has been a lot of bad reporting on this issue. Never that I'm aware has a person at a sports lab been accused of tainting a sample. Police labs have for the obvious reasons. My only agenda is to try to steer the debate in a way that is fair, and I don;t think the labs have infringed on anybody's due process. Pound, UCI, and others have been the ones who have shown biases and agendas. Not the Labs atmo.

JG

[QUOTE=gdw]"These people who do the work are well thought of professionals."

I have no axe to grind and just think that Phonak and Floyd should have covered their butts after his comeback and taken their own samples to compare with any questionable test results. All it takes is one person. There are a number of police labs in this country, including a very prominent one in DC, who have fudged tests or made serious errors in the past so unfortunately one cannot always accept lab results as being 100 percent reliable.

I based my original comments about the lab on an old article from Velonews concerning the Armstrong leak. It might be incorrect.

QUOTE]

[e-RICHIE]

I think there has been a lot of bad reporting on this issue.


yeah. and this rbr post (http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.racing/msg/0d3f075a33bdbf71?hl=en&) is great in saying as much about it atmo.

[Cary Ford]

What would cause a person to have low epitestosterone levels?

Doping.

[Dekonick]

Doping.

explain please

[iPaul]

Speaking of testosterone, Wow look at the girl in yellow! sorry couldn't resist. :D :D

[Louis]

explain please

I agree 100% with Dekonick.

Cary, if you're going to make a comment like that you have to back it up with at least an explanation. Even better would be a link to a medical journal article. A stand-alone statement carries little weight.

Louis

[fiamme red]

Interesting radio show:

http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2006/08/20060807_b_main.asp