© Copyright 2011, Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Chapter 12 Performance-Enhancing Drugs and Drug Testing in Sports

© Copyright 2011, Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

Chapter 12

Performance-Enhancing Drugs and Drug Testing in Sports


Drug-Taking Behaviorin Sports

• The use of performance-enhancing (ergogenic) drugs in athletic competition has a long history, dating from the original Olympic Games in ancient Greece.

• In the modern era, the principal type of performance-enhancing drugs has been anabolic steroids.


Table 12.1



• These synthetic drugs are all based on variations of the testosterone molecule.

• Since the late 1980s, anabolic steroids have been popular with body builders as well as competitive athletes.



• This latter group typically takes steroids in enormous quantities and administers them in a largely unsupervised fashion.

• Recently, great concerns have been raised about the use of anabolic steroids, as well as other performance-enhancing drugs, in major league baseball.


The Hazards ofAnabolic Steroids

• The hazards of steroid use include liver tumors, mood swings, and increased aggressiveness.

• For men, the effects include lower sperm count, enlargement of the breasts, atrophy of the testicles, baldness, and severe acne.

• For women, masculinizing changes occur, only some of which are reversible when steroids are withdrawn.


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Patterns of AnabolicSteroid Abuse

• Since 1990, anabolic steroids have been classified as Schedule III controlled substances, making their possession and sale without a specific medical prescription illegal.

• In 2004, steroid precursors were added to the category of Schedule III controlled substances.


Patterns of AnabolicSteroid Abuse

• These drugs are now distributed through illicit black market channels.

• About 13 to 18 percent of individuals taking large doses of steroids develop both physical and psychological dependence.


Nonsteroid Hormones and Performance-Enhancing

Supplements • Human growth hormone (hGH) is a

nonsteroid hormone that has been used for performance-enhancing purposes.

• Two dietary supplements, androstenedione and creatine, have been prominent recently as performanceenhancing aids.


Nonmedical Use of Stimulant Medication in Baseball

• Although amphetamines were officially banned in major league baseball (MLB) in 2005, for a long time players had been taking amphetamines to stay focused and ward off fatigue.


Nonmedical Use of Stimulant Medication in Baseball

• In 2007, an unusually large number of MLB players reported taking stimulant medications for ADHD treatment, raising suspicions that this was an effort to circumvent prohibitions against nonmedical stimulant use.


Current Drug-Testing Procedures and Policies

• Drug-testing procedures, chiefly for those in organized athletics, have become increasingly sophisticated in their ability to detect the presence of banned substances.



• Two major techniques, based either on urine or on oral-fluid (saliva) samples, are enzyme immunoassay (EIA) and a combination of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC/MS).



• The ultimate goal of drug-testing procedures is to make it impossible to yield either a false-negative or false-positive result.

• A sensitive test yields few false negatives, and a specific test yields few false positives.


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© Copyright 2011, Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. Chapter 12 Performance-Enhancing Drugs and Drug Testing in Sports