Dietary Supplements and Athletes

Strict Liability
Most sports, including all those that are signatories to the World Anti-Doping Code, hold an athlete strictly liable for any prohibited substance which is found in their bodies. The idea is that is does not matter how the banned substance made its way into the athlete's body - the athlete is strictly liable for the presence of that substance. Even if an athlete takes the utmost care in guarding against inadvertent ingestion of a banned substance, he or she may still be found to have committed a doping offense if such a substance is found in his or her body.

Athletes have been unsuccessful in their claims that since a mislabeled dietary supplement was the source of their positive test they should be found innocent of a doping offense. Therefore, athletes must be extremely careful about what they put into their bodies. While no testing program can provide 100% assurance (as discussed here), a program based on quality science can provide the highest level of assurance possible that a product is clean.

Policies of Sport Authorities
Sport authorities vary considerably in their policies toward the use of supplements. Many within the anti-doping world take a 'just say no' approach and urge athletes to eschew the use of any dietary supplements, including vitamins, amino acids, and protein supplements. Many athletes feel that this is an unrealistic approach as these supplements are a vital part of their training regimen. This 'just say no' approach also ignores the fact that most manufacturers within the dietary supplement industry are responsible, honest, and legitimately concerned about the reputation of their industry amidst the media attention given to athletes who blame supplements (often falsely) for their positive tests.

Importance of Quality Science
Many athletes and consumers might think that any laboratory can analyze a dietary supplement for the presence of banned substances as well as the next. The truth is that detection of banned substances is a highly intricate science that should be carried out only by laboratories experienced in doping detection methods and research. Only a laboratory experienced in analyzing human biological specimens for prohibited substances can fully understand and evaluate the potential of a dietary supplement to contain a banned substance or cause an inadvertent positive doping test.

Limits of Detection
Possibly the most important aspect of a quality testing program is the sensitivity of an analysis method - otherwise known as the limits of detection. A method's detection limit is the smallest concentration of a banned substance that the method will be able to reveal. When even trace amounts of banned substances can cause an athlete to test positive, the lowest possible detection limit becomes absolutely crucial for the efficacy of a dietary supplement testing program.

To illustrate the importance of detection limits, consider a true story that occurred recently when an athlete tested positive for a banned stimulant. The athlete knew that he had not intentionally ingested the stimulant, so he sent a sample of the dietary supplement that he had been consuming to a laboratory to have it analyzed. After thorough analysis, the laboratory concluded that the product did not contain the banned stimulant. The national anti-doping agency became involved, and sent the product sample to another laboratory with a wealth of experience in the anti-doping sciences. This experienced laboratory found that the product contained a low concentration (~500 nanograms per gram) of the banned stimulant, and thus was the source of the positive test. As it turned out, the first laboratory's limit of detection was 50 micrograms per gram - roughly 100 times higher than would have been necessary to show that the dietary supplement could cause a positive doping test.

The detection limits used by the BSCG program are extremely low - 10 nanograms per gram for anabolic agents and 100 nanograms per gram for stimulants. Since it is a scientific impossibility to have detection limits equal to zero, athletes and consumers alike should always be sure that a method is sensitive enough to reveal the smallest concentrations of potentially dangerous banned substances possible.

100% Guarantee is a Scientific Impossibility
Certainly an athlete or consumer will want to take all precautions possible to ensure that there product is banned substance free. However, an absolute 100% guarantee is impossible and athletes and consumers should be wary of any program or laboratory that makes such a claim. One reason why this is true is because of an analysis method's limit of detection, as discussed above.

Another reason is that a laboratory can only test samples of a product. Even if the laboratory tests every batch, as occurs with products participating in the BSCG program, the laboratory can only test samples of the batch of product, but not the actual powder, capsule, or bar that is eventually consumed. This is because the analysis itself necessarily must exhaust the specific material (the sample) that is being tested. If the laboratory were to test 100% of each batch, there would be no product left to consume! While it is very important that a sample of every batch of a product is tested to ensure compliance as best as possible, it is still only a sample of the product that is tested and not the actual material that is eventually consumed.

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