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Urine Test for HGH Discovered

When Major League Baseball finally got around to effective testing for performance enhancing substances, human growth hormones or HGH was excluded from the program because no effective non-invasive (read without drawing blood) had been developed. Commissioner Bud, who had never wanted to take on the union over drugs in the first place, certainly didn't want to do battle over whether players would have to submit to random blood tests. So, HGH remains likely to be in use in baseball and most other professional sports none of which have effective testing programs for the use of it due to the blood drawing problem.

Now comes word that a group of researchers have apparently stumbled into a urine test which detects the presence of HGH. I say stumbled into it because the researchers, Virginia-based Ceres Nanosciences, partnered with George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and Italy's Istituto Superiore di Sanit were actually doing cancer research and not actively searching for an effective HGH test. Nevertheless, Ceres believes it can have a test on the market in six months. Assuming that the test passes scientific scrutiny, expect that each of the professional leagues, here and abroad will be under intense pressure to adopt as will the World Anti-Doping Agency, which has been proactively seeking a test for some time now. While no athlete has been found to have used HGH, several athletes including Marion Jones and Andy Pettitte have admitted it.

Full post as published by Sports Biz on July 23, 2008 (boomark / email).