Dr. James Stray-Gundersen, a surgeon and sports-physiology expert now at the University of Utah, Insert: and good pal of Alberto Salazar and Team Physician of Rupp and the Goucers was working for Norwegian anti-doping authorities in collaboration with Lasne when the test was being developed. During an interview Thursday, Stray-Gundersen said he had no doubt as to its reliability.
Athletes in recent years may have figured out masking tricks to disguise drug use or have learned when to quit taking EPO to make sure it clears the urine before in-competition testing. But like the test itself, such techniques didn't exist in 1999.
"Nobody back then knew how to beat the test," Stray-Gundersen said. "If they ran the test on these frozen samples and saw these multiple bands (denoting synthetic EPO), that would be pretty damn good evidence."
He recalled collecting urine samples from 22 Norwegian athletes for a clinical test in which 15 were injected with EPO three times a week for seven weeks while seven other athletes were given saline injections as a control.
Lasne analyzed the urine samples, which were taken at varying times after the injections. In 14 of the 15 athletes who got the drug, the test detected its presence. One athlete never tested positive, and some tested positive only after a delay of several days.
But in no case was there a false signal of the drug when it wasn't there, the researchers discovered.
"We never saw a false positive in the placebos," Stray-Gundersen said. "It's there or it's not. This is why there are no false positives -- you have to have the band patterns of the recombinant form."
Insert: Which tells us that Lagat's initial positive followed by an "inconclusive" was BS.
We should also note the following:
In some circumstances, the "B" sample has come back negative. This has happened before, notably when Kenyan runner Bernard Lagat's second sample failed to confirm the "A" test's EPO. An inconclusive "B" test is less than ideal.
"EPO - in its natural state or the synthesized version - is not stable in urine, even if stored at minus 20 degrees."
De Ceaurriz and Ayotte agree that if enough Erythropoietin - synthetic or natural - remains in a sample, distinguishing the two is not an issue. Such degradation, both said, does not lead to false positives.
"One of two things happens," De Ceaurriz said. "Either EPO, which is a protein, degrades as time passes and becomes undetectable. In that case we have a negative test result or, as in this case, the EPO persists as it is. We have therefore no doubt about the validity of our results."
"I have been instructing everyone at all of the organizations not to expect to reproduce an EPO adverse finding if more that two or three months has elapsed since the sample was originally taken."
"EPO is a protein hormone and it is not stable in urine, even when kept frozen," she said. "This has long had implications for any plan we've had to keep samples and specimens for long periods of time with the hope that we might, some day, retest those samples for a new substance.