Oddest EPO theory I've read in a while

iainf72

From here

6:49AM - Here's my theory about CERA use and the rest of the positives here for EPO. They're not doping with just EPO. There has been - for a long time now - a tendency among some riders to use EPO to mask blood doping. Here's how it works. There's still no test for autologous blood doping - removing and then reinfusing your own blood. The only way that we can currently get a clue you're doing it is a couple of measures like reticulocyte count (new red blood cell production) and OFF-score, which basically uses retic and hemoglobin count to judge how much of your body's blood, by percent, is newly produced.

If you blood dope, your body shuts down new red cell production. It's homeostasis - you're pushing your natural biomarkers off line and your body is trying to return to normal. That shows up in a blood test because your retic drops to zero and your OFF-Score soars. Over 130 is typically considered suspect.

So if you were blood doping and trying to cover it up, what would you do? You'd take micro-doses of EPO, just enough to boost your retic count to plausible levels, but not enough to test positive for EPO use. And a drug like CERA, a continuous release option, is a perfect drug for that.

I think most of the EPO positives we've seen are not actually EPO. They're EPO as a masking agent. This dates back to Roberto Heras after the 2005 Vuelta - that was probably the first actual testing catch of this kind of situation.

Kléber

Indeed. In Duenas's room, they found pouches of blood and infusion equipment, ie a drip.

z000m

its alot to do between days in the middle of a tdf

Ramanujan

interesting theory.
it's true. Why would the rider be blood doping AND using EPO

attica

z000m wrote:

its alot to do between days in the middle of a tdf

I think I read this in the book "The death of Marco Pantani"

Riders will be on saline drips all night in order to rehydrate and those doping will be setting alarms against their heart rates, the problem with EPO is that with blood so thick, if your HR drops below a certain figure it'll start to coagulate.
Alarm goes off, rider gets up and does a quick turn on his turbo or runs a few lengths of the hotel corridor.

All of a sudden a blood transfusion doesn't seem like too much hassle.

PS please ignore this if I just made it up in my head or dreamt it or something, I normally like to be sure of the facts but the dog ate my copy of said book so I can't cross reference.

leguape

Attica wrote:

z000m wrote:

its alot to do between days in the middle of a tdf

I think I read this in the book "The death of Marco Pantani"

Riders will be on saline drips all night in order to rehydrate and those doping will be setting alarms against their heart rates, the problem with EPO is that with blood so thick, if your HR drops below a certain figure it'll start to coagulate.
Alarm goes off, rider gets up and does a quick turn on his turbo or runs a few lengths of the hotel corridor.

All of a sudden a blood transfusion doesn't seem like too much hassle.

PS please ignore this if I just made it up in my head or dreamt it or something, I normally like to be sure of the facts but the dog ate my copy of said book so I can't cross reference.

Saline needs no storage though as it's just sterile fluid. You can pump a unit in fairly quickly, about 1 litre an hour. Blood needs to be very carefully stored at the correct temperature to stop it degrading, far more difficult to do. Also, I was of the impression that it can't be transfused as quickly as saline.

RichN95.

Here's two stranger theories I have read (both on Looney Tunes forum cyclingfoums - which I read for a laugh)

1. Astana were excluded to protect them. Bruneeyl bribes ASO and UCI to make sure they never get caught and they were left out so they wouldn't be caught by the new CERA test.

2. Damsgaard is secretly Europe's leading doping doctor.

I told you they were strange

Cumulonimbus

If you blood-dope and your body stops producing new red-blood cells then could this affect you in the future, ie if you keep on blood-doping for quite a while then your body's ability to produce new red blood cells is lowered thereafter? I imnagine that with time it would come back to normal but i was just wondering?

donrhummy

Sounds plausible but I don't know enough about the actual physical process to know if this really makes sense. Still, very interesting.

Monty Dog

Seems plausible to me. In Matt Rendell's book he mentions the fact that Pantani's EPO abuse had led to a virtual standstill in his natural red blood cell production and hence the need to continue to take EPO. His medical record after his Milan-Turin crash showed all sorts of weird blood values. Apart from the storage (and labelling) problem of autologous transfusion, it could be seen as being more sensible and safer to use your own 'packed' cells rather than EPO.

Jeff Jones

Could be, although I suspect the blood test is sensitive enough to pick up these sorts of manipulations.

If you're reinfusing blood then taking EPO to kick start red cell production again, you're going to have a pretty high hemoglobin/hct aren't you? I know Ricco had a certificate for this, but I'm sure there were enough variations in his blood values to alert the testers.

And if you took EPO after taking blood out in order get things going again, it's also going to show up because you've got your own body producing red cells at an accelerated rate.

ms_tree

Monty Dog wrote:

Seems plausible to me. In Matt Rendell's book he mentions the fact that Pantani's EPO abuse had led to a virtual standstill in his natural red blood cell production and hence the need to continue to take EPO. His medical record after his Milan-Turin crash showed all sorts of weird blood values. Apart from the storage (and labelling) problem of autologous transfusion, it could be seen as being more sensible and safer to use your own 'packed' cells rather than EPO.

But didn't the autopsy show that there hadn't been prolonged use?