new study shows micro-doping can boost performance nearly 5% and impossible to detect

rekrunner wrote:

I repeatedly asked "why so few by so little?"

Yes. But your definition of "so few" and "so little" appears a bit strange, compared to the facts. Plus, sometimes you go all out and pretend there were barely any or even no improvements among the non-Africans after 1990.

Subway Surfers wrote:

Casual my friend, this was an excellent compilation with obvious conclusions, the only thing I would add is that many of these steriods (Nandrolone, Dianabol etc) were actually creations of the 1950s, but it was the likes of the East Germans experimenting throughout the 1970s and 1980s to find the best cycles of these drugs. In short there was a slow learning as to maximize the utility of these drugs. As testing/detectability has improved, cheats have learnt to do more with less.

You might find these interesting about the Soviets history with steroids & blood doping:

Aragon wrote:

In the microinfusion study itself, it is strange why performance (mean watts) is increased by 4.7 % when hemoglobin count is partially recovered from 14.1 to 14.6 g/dl with the 135 ml infusion, whereas it is increased only by 0.9 % when it is increased further to 15.5 g/dl and beyond the "natural" value (15.0) with the extra 235 ml of RBCs even when Hb is elevated by some 6 %.

https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/juoksufoorumi/monthly_2018_12/blooddoping135.jpg.8578bea050c6a5951874ef0bb5981bce.jpg

It is also noteworthy but unsurprising that the mean watt output is barely higher than the placebo group value in either of the tests and almost all the performance boost is from subnormal to normal.

Marginal gains are still gains. There is nothing surprising about anything you are going on about.

My point is that there are no generic "blood transfusion studies in general" but each one has a specific goal and the information generated is also very specific to a certain set of conditions.

An indeed, there does exist a few blood transfusion studies preceding the Swedish research, but it is far from certain how widely known these were and what lesson to draw from them, and when they were discussed in the blood doping literature in the 1970's, the commentators weren't generally convinced that this material combined with the Swedish research (let alone) proved that blood doping "worked". The pre-1972 papers in general aren't related and there are no followup studies confirming the findings.

What research was there?

1) Pace et al (1945, 1947). Mainly focused on altitude adaptation, but submaximal heart rate at sea level was also lower after transfusion (from c:a 120 to c:a 110), but this wasn't what they mainly researched and the preliminary report nor the title mention this finding at all, and the test is a slow treadmill walk not much to do with competitive performance (4 miles/hour). It is not even a paper of exercise physiology as such but of environmental physiology to research adaptation to different conditions.

2) Gullbring et al (1960) and Robinson et al (1966) researched how changes in blood volume affect performance or Vo2Max. Whereas there is some performance benefit in the Gullbring paper, it also claims that blood donation alone increases watt output by 5 % [sic], and the key conclusion of Robinson paper is that large blood infusion doesn't affect Vo2Max at all.

If we contrast this with the later Swedish research, then there was rationale to elevate Hb concentration and interest in Vo2max and maximal performance, and it created a new research tradition with a cluster of followup studies on the subject.

difference between first and tenth wrote:

Marginal gains are still gains. There is nothing surprising about anything you are going on about.

You don't finding it surprising that there is so clear curvilinear relationship between Hb and mean watt output that body doesn't make barely any use of the extra RBCs if one goes beyond the adapted natural value?

Thank you for the clarification and summary.

Aragon wrote:

difference between first and tenth wrote:

Marginal gains are still gains. There is nothing surprising about anything you are going on about.

You don't finding it surprising that there is so clear curvilinear relationship between Hb and mean watt output that body doesn't make barely any use of the extra RBCs if one goes beyond the adapted natural value?

No. The same way all people don't respond to the same training exactly the same way. Do you even run?

FWIW, I do, and yet I don't.

I do, because you would expect a linear relationship between hemoglobin concentration and performance, at least over that range.

I don't, because it was a small N study, and hence it only takes a small amount of variance (usually biological in origin) to noticeably skew the numbers.

(Also FWIW: I did not review the study for MSSE, but was asked to comment on it by CyclingNews...hence the reason I did more than just glance at it.)

Yes, it is a very underpowered study, which most likely explains the somewhat strange non-improvement after the second reinfusion.

Too bad I didn't quote the SDs, but (from the charts) my recollection is that there was no single participant who failed totally after the 235 ml infusion to skew the data downwards and to increase the variance.

Aragon wrote:

In the microinfusion study itself, it is strange why performance (mean watts) is increased by 4.7 % when hemoglobin count is partially recovered from 14.1 to 14.6 g/dl with the 135 ml infusion, whereas it is increased only by 0.9 % when it is increased further to 15.5 g/dl and beyond the "natural" value (15.0) with the extra 235 ml of RBCs even when Hb is elevated by some 6 %.

https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/juoksufoorumi/monthly_2018_12/blooddoping135.jpg.8578bea050c6a5951874ef0bb5981bce.jpg

It is also noteworthy but unsurprising that the mean watt output is barely higher than the placebo group value in either of the tests and almost all the performance boost is from subnormal to normal.

I don't have access to the article, but clearly something is not right here if you're reporting the results properly. Either the "extra 235 ml" is plasma only and not RBCs at all, some other significant factor wasn't controlled such as heat/humidity during the time trial or this is simply a good example of why you can't take every study to be gospel.

Most people don't read more than a few studies here and there, which is why they don't fully realize how many poor studies are published. It's amazing to see some of the stuff that gets funded; either trying to reinvent or rediscover the wheel or just a matter of having poor intuition or practical experience.

Interesting to see Dr. Coggan over here.

OK, I need to remember that i'm surrounded by tards, including myself! and should have re-read the abstract at the very least before posting.

The 4.7% gain in power after the first 135ml transfusion was for a time trial of approximately 45-50 MINUTES in length. The .9% gain in power after the 235ml transfusion came in the second time trial the day after the first one and was an average of their power output for 4 x 30 SECONDS.

It is completely reasonable to expect to see a much larger impact as a percentage on power output for a predominately aerobic output last nearly 50 minutes versus several sprints lasting 30 seconds.

Does anybody expect a 200 meter runner to gain as much from EPO as a half marathoner? Of course not.

If I am mistaken or for some other reason misrepresent the data, mea culpa, and I should retract my statements.

While at this moment I don't have access to the paper, I am still quite sure I haven't done so, because I am pretty sure I doublechecked the data, and the authors of the paper write in relation to the 135+235ml tests that "changes in time trial mean power and time to completion following the combined transfusions were not different from those obtained following the low-volume transfusion" indicating it was the same type of test. Clearly there was in addition the 4x30 test.

One possible criticism could be that those are absolute increases and not increases vs. placebo, but I think the placebo watts and times were pretty same (on average) throughout the study, so there should be no significant difference.

Thus far the only people treating the study as "gospel" are the antidoping activists and the public prone to moral panic who are eager to quote the "5 %" figure for their own reasons.

But I'll hope that someone corrects me if I am wrong.

+1

I don't know about strange -- the results of my quality and quantity calculations are also facts -- facts specifically selected to characterize progress in the EPO-era relative to a 1990 world benchmark. If I had lowered the benchmark, say, back to Ron Clarke's 1966 performance of 13:16.6, I'm confident I would get a similar factual result of statistically significantly inferior quantity and quality from a non-African population that outnumbers East Africans by a factor of 15, over a period spanning 52 years including steroids, blood transfusions, and EPO. Then this would raise some awkward questions: - Are non-Africans just bad at doping? (they seem to have got it right in cycling...) - or are non-Africans just bad at performing, for non-doping reasons?

casual obsever wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

I repeatedly asked "why so few by so little?"

Yes. But your definition of "so few" and "so little" appears a bit strange, compared to the facts. Plus, sometimes you go all out and pretend there were barely any or even no improvements among the non-Africans after 1990.

Aragon wrote:

While at this moment I don't have access to the paper, I am still quite sure I haven't done so, because I am pretty sure I doublechecked the data, and the authors of the paper write in relation to the 135+235ml tests that "changes in time trial mean power and time to completion following the combined transfusions were not different from those obtained following the low-volume transfusion" indicating it was the same type of test. Clearly there was in addition the 4x30 test.

One possible criticism could be that those are absolute increases and not increases vs. placebo, but I think the placebo watts and times were pretty same (on average) throughout the study, so there should be no significant difference.

Ok, let's clarify a few things.

One, you are right about the 2nd time trial. Specifically, the authors wrote:

1st transfusion:

"The post hoc analysis revealed that following a low-volume transfusion, time trial mean power increased (P < 0.05) by 4.7 ± 1.6 %, while the mean power in the PLA trial was unaffected (0.3 ± 4.5 %). Time to completion became 4.4 ± 1.5 % faster after transfusion (P < 0.05) but was constant (-0.3 ± 4.5 %) in PLA."

2nd transfusion:

"Post hoc analysis demonstrated that, following the combined high-volume transfusion, the time trial mean power increased (P < 0.01) by 5.6 ± 2.7 % but remained similar in PLA (0.0 ± 7.0 %). Time to completion became 5.1 ± 2.6 % faster (P < 0.05) in the BT group but remained similar in PLA (0.4 ± 7.5 %)."

Two, yes there is a story with the SDs, as you can see in the quote above: the SD is higher (compare the high volume power increase of 5.6 ± 2.7 % with the low volume power increase of 4.7 ± 1.6 %). This is to a large part caused by the two people who actually got worse after the second transfusion (but still better than before the first transfusion), if I understand Figure 2 correctly (which has neither a very detailed caption nor detailed description in the main text).

Three, yes, as stated a few pages back, the placebo group did not increase significantly in performance (also quoted above in this post).

Four, if one were to plot that graph you linked to with the SDs, especially when also adding to roughly ± 0.8 g/dl in [Hb], one could easily put in a linear curve. Alternatively, one could say that the performance did not increase between the two transfusions (while the first increase is significant).

btw, if that's your graph, Aragon: the plot shows relative mean power in %. The actual mean power values range from 150 W to 310 W, depending on the person and trial.

This seems like an important point to clarify. If the baseline blood value at the beginning of the study was 15.0 g/dl, then measuring the sustained power at two different "anemic" blood levels hardly seems representative of the athlete trying to increase his RBCs to above normal to achieve a performance above normal.

Aragon wrote:

In the microinfusion study itself, it is strange why performance (mean watts) is increased by 4.7 % when hemoglobin count is partially recovered from 14.1 to 14.6 g/dl with the 135 ml infusion, whereas it is increased only by 0.9 % when it is increased further to 15.5 g/dl and beyond the "natural" value (15.0) with the extra 235 ml of RBCs even when Hb is elevated by some 6 %.

https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/juoksufoorumi/monthly_2018_12/blooddoping135.jpg.8578bea050c6a5951874ef0bb5981bce.jpg

It is also noteworthy but unsurprising that the mean watt output is barely higher than the placebo group value in either of the tests and almost all the performance boost is from subnormal to normal.

rekrunner wrote:

Then this would raise some awkward questions:

- Are non-Africans just bad at doping? (they seem to have got it right in cycling...)

- or are non-Africans just bad at performing, for non-doping reasons?

Not sure what's so awkward about that. It's quite obvious that the runners (and sprinters) of African heritage are faster than the Asians and Caucasians.

I recall that you think that the reasons for that are not related to doping, but a combination of motivation/culture/genes. So... why do you so often bring up the fact that Africans outperform the rest of the world, to try downplay the advantages runners can get from PEDs?

rekrunner wrote:

This seems like an important point to clarify. If the baseline blood value at the beginning of the study was 15.0 g/dl, then measuring the sustained power at two different "anemic" blood levels hardly seems representative of the athlete trying to increase his RBCs to above normal to achieve a performance above normal.

True. As discussed earlier in this thread.

On the other hand, that is actually a realistic doping scenario for elite athletes who went into the "anemic" range during their hard training over 2 - 3 months, and then blood-doped their values back up during the taper period. The ABP would not catch that, and it seems to be beneficial for the performance.

While you readily admit that Africans are faster, you are rather unique in admitting that (among my regular opponents), and these admissions and concessions seem to go unnoticed by anyone else. The answer to your question "why?" are not always addressed to you, but can be found in the posts of the likes of "Coevett" and "m!ndweak". Look just now, Coevett thinks that the non-Africans just are not doping because they don't have the culture. This is a far more severe statement about doping prevalence than me saying "greater than 29%". And "m!ndweak" is convinced that anyone who shows a 3-5% improvement in their career (which includes just about everyone who has gone from junior to professional) can only have done that by doping, because that number just keeps coming up. While you chose the word "downplay", we are in a thread that advertises 5% performance improvement from low volume blood infusions. This is not the only thread that advertises 5%. You yourself brought up the Scottish and Kenyan study, despite your stated reservations about the Kenyan study. The "facts" you presented in a decade by decade analysis show that non-Africans only improved on the order of 3% since the 1960s -- an improvement which includes many factors, like synthetic tracks, shoes, training, nutrition, professionalism, etc. in addition to your unlimited steroid, unlimited blood doping, unlimited EPO timeline, and steroid ABP timelines. So I try to downplay any notion of 5% for distance runners "at the top", because this puts potential performance improvements for elite runners in a more realistic perspective.

casual obsever wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

Then this would raise some awkward questions:

- Are non-Africans just bad at doping? (they seem to have got it right in cycling...)

- or are non-Africans just bad at performing, for non-doping reasons?

Not sure what's so awkward about that. It's quite obvious that the runners (and sprinters) of African heritage are faster than the Asians and Caucasians.

I recall that you think that the reasons for that are not related to doping, but a combination of motivation/culture/genes. So... why do you so often bring up the fact that Africans outperform the rest of the world, to try downplay the advantages runners can get from PEDs?