Blood Doping/Erythropoietin

Blood Doping/Erythropoietin



Description


Blood doping is a generic term for the artificial increase of the hemoglobin concentration in blood. It can be accomplished in with blood transfusions, either the athlete’s blood or a volunteer’s, or by use of medications such as erythropoietin, a drug that stimulates the body to make more red blood cells. Blood doping increases oxygen-carrying capacity to enhance exercise performance, especially in endurance sports.


Erythropoietin is a naturally occurring hormone that is synthetically produced to treat anemia in patients with renal failure. It is commercially available as Epogen or Procrit. Because this hormone is produced by the kidneys, it is deficient in patients with renal failure. Without erythropoietin, red blood cell production is compromised. Erythropoietin use by healthy athletes is banned in most sports but has become a common way to dope the blood to enhance performance. Other erythropoietin-like drugs are now approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are commercially available, such as darbepoetin (Aranesp).

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Jul 18, 2016 | Posted by in SPORT MEDICINE | Comments Off on Blood Doping/Erythropoietin

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