Athlete's biological passport: to test or not to test?

摘要

Human nature is inherently "competitive" and a reasonable spirit of rivalry is positive for survival and for accomplishing the daily tasks. Nevertheless, this otherwise understandable human inclination occasionally translates into a less sane spirit of "winning at any cost", which might persuade some individuals to undergo unfair and potentially harmful practices to increase body power, resistance as well as mental concentration (1). Humans have always sought to improve bodily functions and athletic performances for a variety of reasons, including political hegemony, fight supremacy and - last but not least - success in competitive sports. Therefore, classical training has been gradually supplemented with the administration of "ergogenic aids", such as natural products, chemicals and animal extracts and, more recently, synthetic substances and unfair technological practices. Since the improvement of bodily functions required to achieve top performance is not identical throughout the different sports disciplines, ergogenic aids are typically classified according to their target, i.e., for improving mental, power or endurance performance. Nevertheless, while some of these "aids" can be considered licit, several others are not, since they might corrupt the fairness of the competition, jeopardize athlete's health or both (1, 2). According to the World-Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the independent foundation that promotes, coordinates and monitors the fight against drugs in sport worldwide, doping substances and practices are classified as non-approved substances (SO; drugs or molecules not addressed by any of the subsequent sections); anabolic agents (S1); peptide hormones, growth factors and related substances (S2); (32 agonists (S3); hormone antagonists and modulators (S4); and diuretics and other masking agents (S5) (3).