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Artificial blood will be easy to detect if used by dopers, say scientists

Red cell replacement being developed in Essex could save lives of road crash victims

Scientists at the University of Essex say the artificial blood they’re developing will be easy to detect if it’s used for doping — because it will turn the clear portion of blood red.

The university announced last week that it had secured a grant to work on an artificial blood replacement product that could be stored at room temperature and would have a shelf life of up to two years.

Such a blood replacement would be a boon in emergency situations as it could be given to patients without the delay of blood-typing, easily carried by paramedics and stockpiled for use in large-scale disasters. Carried in ambulances, it could even help save vulnerable road users such as cyclists after road collisions.

But any product that can enhance the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood has the potential to be used for sporting performance enhancement too.


Professor Chris Cooper (image courtesy runswimthrowcheat.blogspot.co.uk)

Professor Chris Cooper is the researcher leading the team developing the new artificial blood. He told road.cc: “It would act similarly to a top up blood transfusion so yes, it has the possibility of enhancing performance.”

Oxygen in the blood is carried by the haemoglobin in red blood cells and artificial blood replacements such as the one being developed by Cooper’s HaemO2 project group are known as haemoglobin-based oxygen carriers - HBOCs for short.

Other attempts to create safe, effective HBOCs have run into problems because outside the protective environment of the red cell, haemoglobin can be toxic. The beauty of the product being engineered at Essex is that it is detoxified by the body’s own defences.

That, of course, would make it even more attractive to athletes like cyclists looking for a performance boost, who have not historically been deterred by risky procedures administered by dodgy doctors.

Manufacturers of products that can be used to enhance performance by blood manipulation have been criticised in the past for not making abuse by athletes easy to detect. EPO, the hormone that stimulates red cell production, was undetectable for around a decade until a urine test was introduced in 2000.

This time, though Cooper, who is the author of Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat: The science behind drugs in sport, is ahead of the dopers.

“It might be detectable in urine,” he said, “but would be VERY easy to detect in blood as when you spin the cells down the remaining plasma is normally straw coloured. Following HaemO2 doping the plasma would be bright red as the HaemO2 product would reside outside the cells.”

That means the routine haematocrit test the determines the level of an athlete’s red blood cells would also detect HaemO2.

That potential downside taken care of, Cooper was keen to stress the potential benefits of the research for which his team has just secured over £1.5 million of funding from the Medical Research Council.

He said: “We could overcome some of the inherent problems with transfusions as there would be no need for blood group typing and a longer shelf life means you are able to stockpile the supplies necessary for major disasters.

“It also offers the opportunity for routine transfusion support in ambulances or at remote inaccessible locations.”

Cooper said that he thinks the HaemO2 project is five years away from first use of a product in humans.

He also has plenty of interesting stuff to say on the science of doping and anti-doping on his blog, also titled Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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7 comments

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RobD | 9 years ago
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I agree with glynr36, if a rider's had an accident where they needed replacement blood I don't think they're going to be in a fit state to race for quite a lot longer than it would take for the blood to leave the system anyway. The time spent off the bike recovering would probably be more detrimental to their performance on it's own without any actual damage caused by the accident.

Nice to see them considering the doping implications early on and flagging it up.

Avatar
cisgil23 | 9 years ago
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I think the advantages that this development can give to society in general far outweighs the problems that sporting cheats will cause with their mis-use of it.

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andyp | 9 years ago
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'No idea about Spanish football, but pro-tennis players have both blood and urine tests'

and we know how well they work...

Thankfully, the judge ordered the destruction of all Operation Puerto samples, so those tennis players and footballists are safe for the moment.

Avatar
Simmo72 | 9 years ago
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Great news for tennis and all the other sports that don't test. No more of the hassle of storing blood at the right temperature, what a relief it must be for all those Spanish football players.

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bikebot replied to Simmo72 | 9 years ago
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Simmo72 wrote:

Great news for tennis and all the other sports that don't test. No more of the hassle of storing blood at the right temperature, what a relief it must be for all those Spanish football players.

No idea about Spanish football, but pro-tennis players have both blood and urine tests. The sport just had a bit of a bad reputation for doing out of competition testing.

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Airzound | 9 years ago
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…… and a book to push  29

How about a pro cyclist or top athlete who was a given transfusion of this new artificial blood because they suffered a serious accident or injury? If they recovered and regained their previous form would they be prevented from further competition because they had artificial blood in their system? This needs to be considered given the frequency of crashes in Pro road racing.

Avatar
glynr36 replied to Airzound | 9 years ago
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Airzound wrote:

…… and a book to push  29

How about a pro cyclist or top athlete who was a given transfusion of this new artificial blood because they suffered a serious accident or injury? If they recovered and regained their previous form would they be prevented from further competition because they had artificial blood in their system? This needs to be considered given the frequency of crashes in Pro road racing.

The same as what should happen for a TUE for certian substances now, there would be an enforced rest period.
It's hardly like someone is going to spill 4 pints on the road and then be up and racing in a matter of days, so a non issue.

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