Gas Chromatography And Mass Spectrometry

In sports, the competitive drive to win can be very intensive between athletes. Winning in the game usually brings rewards to athletes both financially and psychologically. Such temptations and the consecutive pressures faced by athletes to excel in the sporting events, attempts to achieve a rival edge especially when the application of performance enhancing drugs by athletes in sports activities has becoming a new trend and relatively common. Performance enhancing drugs are used so athletes could achieve better results with least efforts, even as their health and their athletic careers will be placed in danger. That explains why athletes, sports people and body builders turn to performanc enhancing drugs.

Performance-enhancing drugs (PED 's) have been an issue for many decades now for the medical and sports field. Olympic and professional athletes have been using them to gain an upper hand on the competition, but some may ask if it 's really worth it? Studies show that performance-enhancing drugs have been proven to negatively affect the health of athletes who take them. Simply put, performance-enhancing drugs could either improve athletic performance or can be extremely dangerous, in certain situations, deadly. There have been strict rules and drug testing in the professional sporting organizations, as well as in world competitions. For example, in the summer of the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, in two of the

The use of illegal substances is rapidly increasing in the college sports due to the expansion of supplements used by athletes that are being banned. In a study done, athletes were asked if illicit drugs would negatively impact their performance. Majority of them responded “yes”, their main reasoning being; the effects of illicit drugs were both mental and physically damaging. Illicit drugs come in many forms, but the testing procedures are all the same for any substance. There is almost always a consequence with the use of prohibited substances. Drug testing is appropriate to help ensure the safety of student athletes while they participate in intercollegiate contests. (Krotee, M 555).

A number of prominent athletes have recently experienced a 'fall from grace,' because of the revelation that they used performance-enhancing drugs. Perhaps the most famous example of this phenomenon is Lance Armstrong. In an advertisement for Nike that his former sponsor now no doubt regrets, Armstrong is shown asking the viewer "what am I on? I'm on my bike, busting my ass six hours a day." Professional cycling is often cited as one of the sports in which doping is most endemic to its subculture, however a number of professional sports have been embroiled in drug scandals. Because of the many revelations about the number of baseball players who used steroids to get their record-breaking statistics, the 1990s are often called the 'steroid' era of baseball. The Olympic track and field star Marian Jones was stripped of her medals, after finally admitting to the use of performance-enhancing drugs (Lardon 2008). "Despite the health risks, and despite the regulating bodies' attempts to eliminate drugs from sport, the use of illegal substances is widely known to be rife. It hardly raises an eyebrow now when some famous athlete fails a dope test" (Savulescu, Foddy, & Clayton 2004).

Rains, B. (2009). Testing Student Athletes for Drugs is Appropriate. In C. Watkins, Sports and Athletes (pp. 192-196). Detroit: Greenhaven Press.

Answer: Gas chromatography (GC) – utilized by scientists in order to be able to separate the volatile

From the beginning of history, professional and amateur athletes have tempted to use legal or illegal drugs to enhance their performance (1). Athletes have used pharmacological agents, called Performance-enhancing drugs(PEDs), to enhance performance or to become leaner or more muscular (2). In sports, administration of drugs that are forbidden by international world anti-doping agency (WADA) is referred as doping (3). Anabolic androgenic agents (AASs) are the most popular agents that are abused by the athletes, especially bodybuilding athletes. Besides these agents, other classes of drugs such as stimulants and peptide hormones (growth hormone and insulin) are new PEDs that are abused by a lot of athletes in the different sports (1). Other than these compounds, athletes often use dietary supplements like creatine, protein, and vitamins to enhance strength and increase body mass (4-6).

This purpose of this lab is to use gas chromatography to identify unknown compounds. In this lab, six known substances were first tested for their retention times to be used as standards when figuring out the three substances contained in a known mixture. The vernier mini gc in this experiment, just like all the other types of chromatography, have both a stationary and mobile phase. With this instrument, the stationary phase is a metal outer column and the mobile phase is the atmospheric air, which is how the vernier mini gc works. This instrument is used alongside a computer to be able to obtain the readings of the injected substances and shown as peaks on a chromatograph. The specific time it takes for a substance to exit the chromatography

In recent years the number of athletes caught using drugs has increased dramatically. The use of a illegal or unprescribed drugs can cause serious problems and unfairness in many ways. Certain drugs can cause harm to the user and the people around the user, most student athletes do not even know what they are putting into their bodies. With all the risks many persons propose student athletes to be drug tested at random.

A routine drug testing system in high school will help detect cheaters who use performance-enhancing drugs to get and edge over their opponents. In today’s world, with the competitiveness and popularity of steroids and other PEDs among professional athletes, it is not difficult to believe that many high school athletes are doing the same. A 2003 study examining steroid use among teens in the United States showed that 6.1 percent had illegally used steroids and 3.2 percent had injected an illegal drug one or more times during their lifetime ("Teens and Drugs Fast Facts"). Nevertheless, if a routine drug testing system is established, those who are caught cheating will most likely get suspended or even banned from high school sports thus making the competitive field more leveled. In addition, those who are tempted to use performance-enhancers will be less likely to in order to avoid the consequences.

In the middle of the 20th century, a troublesome problem arose in the sports world: doping. In the 1960s, the first evidence that athletes were using performance-enhancing drugs surfaced (Catlin, Fitch, and Ljungqvist 104). Even though significant evidence prevailed that athletes used the drugs to increase their athletic performance, there was no way to detect drug use. People did not know what to think of the problem, but when a cyclist died at the 1960 Olympic Games from doping, sports organizations started to take action (Catlin, Fitch, and Ljungqvist 100). Scientists went to work looking for a way to detect performance-enhancing drugs in athletes. It took several years before any reliable drug testing methods came about. During the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup in 1966, the first drug test was performed (Hanstad, Smith, and Waddington 229). In the following year, more sports organizations took a stance against drugs in sports. Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) and the

This article reviews the prevalence, physiology and effects of common PESs among athletes, and the evolution of drug testing-from physician perspective since last decade. Surprisingly, the result of survey in this study revealed most of the athletes taking these drugs begin at a young age and they lack knowledge about future implication of its usage. Most of these drugs seem harmless; some of these substances are naturally occurring, easily available and completely legal. World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) labels a substance as banned in competition if two of the following three criteria are met: (1) enhances sport performance, (2) poses a risk to health, or (3) violates the spirit of the sport [3].Performance Enhancing Drugs that have been totally

2. The international Olympic committee and professional sports leagues use urine testing to detect steroid use both in and out of competition.

     Liquid chromatography is an analytical technique that is useful for separating ions or molecules that are dissolved in a liquid phase. If the sample solution is in contact

The use of performance enhancers and prohibited drugs in sports goes back as far as the year 1889 when Pud Galvin a Pittsburgh’s baseball pitcher used performance enhancer before pitching in a game against Boston. Pud used something called “Elixir of Brown Sequard” containing mostly testosterone drained from the gonads of an animal. The use of performance enhancers may seem natural in terms of gaining an edge in a competition but the attached strings may far outweigh its advantages. Mostly the short-term benefits of gaining advantage are associated with the long-term health risks of the athlete. The attached health vulnerability of the athletes underpins the need of strict regularization code for performance enhancers through robust, precise and accurate analytical techniques. We will discuss and compare various analytical challenges encountered during doping control analysis in this report. Sampling is the first to start with. A good sampling