Canova was right! EPO does not work on trained athletes

This is sooooo of false it is not even funny. EPO-era cyclists were so much faster (adjusted for technology gains) than current cyclists. EPO works for all ethnicities (some just don't benefit to the same degree)

The Armstrong era times up big mountains were far faster than they are now. Something they were taking then and not taking now made a difference. The difference started in the early 90s, when Indurain dominated, and continued throughout that decade until the introduction of the blood passport, when times/speeds came down. But one can put one's head in the sand and ignore the evidence if one likes.

However, it is reasonable to ask if it was EPO that made the difference, or something else they were taking. It is plausible that they believed it was X that was doing everything, when it was really Y, or X and Y together, not just X.

hes an elite coach,coaching elite athletes.of course he'll say epo doesnt work,despite evidence that it works a little too well.and im pretty sure he has first hand experience in knowing how well it works,as most kenyans are drugged up to their eyeballs.

Inquiry minds want to know wrote:

Interested Cyclist wrote:

Anyone have access to the full article? I very highly doubt their protocol was correct.

Any thoughts as to why their protocol was incorrect?

The study is absolutely useless as applied to Tour de France.

They gave 20 subjects one EPO injection weekly for 8 weeks, then had them race up Mt. Ventoux against a control group.

That's it, just a one-day race.

The Tour de France stretches over a 3 week period. Nobody claims that EPO improves single-day performance in isolation*, so the study is not at all surprising.

The purported benefit of EPO is increased rate of recovery and total workload. That only kicks in during multiday trials, such as a tough period of high mileage and hard workouts, or a multiday stage race.

*The authors could have tried increasing the workouts given to the EPO group - I'd think they would have done better than the control even in the 1 day test after that.

disgraceful_admin wrote:

Inquiry minds want to know wrote:

Any thoughts as to why their protocol was incorrect?

The study is absolutely useless as applied to Tour de France.

They gave 20 subjects one EPO injection weekly for 8 weeks, then had them race up Mt. Ventoux against a control group.

That's it, just a one-day race.

The Tour de France stretches over a 3 week period. Nobody claims that EPO improves single-day performance in isolation*, so the study is not at all surprising.

The purported benefit of EPO is increased rate of recovery and total workload. That only kicks in during multiday trials, such as a tough period of high mileage and hard workouts, or a multiday stage race.

*The authors could have tried increasing the workouts given to the EPO group - I'd think they would have done better than the control even in the 1 day test after that.

Actually, I'd like to emphasize that last point a bit more. This study just shows that EPO won't magically make you faster unless you work harder and more than before.

When pros take EPO, they train a lot harder to make use of the increased recovery capabilities.

So if the authors wanted to replicate reality, they would made the doping group do harder workouts than the control group... but wait... if the control group is doing different workouts, then that's not much of a control is it?

Maybe they should give both groups crazy hard workouts so that the recovery capabilities of EPO kick in and the control group overtrains. Not sure if they did that, paper was paywalled.

Lance did "win" 7 TdFs wrote:

Oh great! It won't be long now before Canova & Aragon appear with their high-fives and a victory celebration 😁. Hey, but maybe one positive thing will come out of this: Lance might get his TdF's titles reinstated because EPO doesn't work...who could have imagined? 😄

The only problem with this is...............that Lance Armstrong is on record saying that EPO was the best PED ever made.

As well as EPO, Armstrong admitted to using testosterone, human growth hormone and the steroid cortisone during his seven back-to-back Tour victories from 1999 to 2005.

But Prof Adam F Cohen, MD said: “Quite possibly all the stuff he was taking was useless.

“Even less is known about many of it than EPO.”

wtf

Inquiry minds want to know wrote:

Interested Cyclist wrote:

Anyone have access to the full article? I very highly doubt their protocol was correct.

Any thoughts as to why their protocol was incorrect?

At this point I can not say because there are no specifics of the test results in the free abstract.

More than likely they did not test ferritin before starting. Ferritin ought to be well above 100 if you're going to be doing EPO. Additionally, the only power outputs they mention are for the entire group taking EPO and the entire group average getting the placebo. Therefore, you can't see the actual power numbers of each individual. Additionally, they introduced an extraordinary amount of variables in this ride to Mt. Ventoux and then the "road-race" up it. That was completely unnecessary, possibly to "prove" something they were hoping to I surmise.

I can tell you this much: nobody involved in the study design or carrying out the study has done epo before. Otherwise, they would never had wasted their time on this sort of junk.

You want to do a study to see if EPO is effective? Here's what you do.

1. All subjects must have ferritin level between 150 - 250

2. Resting heart rate must be taken on a daily basis upon awaking.

3. When doing a ramp test, 25w increase every 5 minutes is not a standard that cyclist use very often. Either go up 25w every 1 minute for amateurs, 20w every 1 minute for elites, or 50w every 4 minutes. 25w every 5 minutes shows ignorance on the part of those doing the study.

4. Do a power test that can show how fast lactate can be cleared, such as doing all-out 30 second sprints with 1:30 rest five times in a row.

Most of these studies are a complete joke. The reason being that the people who know the truth are not aloud to talk about it and the people trying to figure it out through scientific testing have no personal experience to lead the way.

Interesting analysis.

So much for the "peed"-review process of scientific research? Any reason why a journal editor would publish something like this? And what would be the agenda of the researchers if they know (or should know?) how poorly designed the study was in the first place?

I can see in the medical-drug arena where so many of the studies are industry-funded and result in a publication bias (who would have imagined). And many drug companies want to make a quick profit with newly FDA approved drug and worry about the lawsuits later. But in this case, there's no profit involved nor safety studies needed. So, what's their agenda?...to vindicate past EPO users? Lol. And if it's inexperience or incompetence, I find it hard to believe with academics at that level.

Stink Test wrote:

So much for the "peed"-review process of scientific research? Any reason why a journal editor would publish something like this? And what would be the agenda of the researchers if they know (or should know?) how poorly designed the study was in the first place?

Sadly, life sciences' research has been a become more a game of getting out a "catchy" story about your "research" with your name up in lights as author rather than a genuine effort to pursue understanding about a research subject area. The profession has lost its way and it's become journalism more than anything.

I heard that beets (and other sources of nitric oxide) help manage hematocrit levels in people using EPO.

Stink Test wrote:

Interesting analysis.

So much for the "peed"-review process of scientific research? Any reason why a journal editor would publish something like this? And what would be the agenda of the researchers if they know (or should know?) how poorly designed the study was in the first place?

I can see in the medical-drug arena where so many of the studies are industry-funded and result in a publication bias (who would have imagined). And many drug companies want to make a quick profit with newly FDA approved drug and worry about the lawsuits later. But in this case, there's no profit involved nor safety studies needed. So, what's their agenda?...to vindicate past EPO users? Lol. And if it's inexperience or incompetence, I find it hard to believe with academics at that level.

Maybe they are trying to get the word out it doesn't work for athletes so the black market dies off?

Can somebody post the full study?

Stink Test wrote:

Interesting analysis.

So much for the "peed"-review process of scientific research? Any reason why a journal editor would publish something like this? And what would be the agenda of the researchers if they know (or should know?) how poorly designed the study was in the first place?

I can see in the medical-drug arena where so many of the studies are industry-funded and result in a publication bias (who would have imagined). And many drug companies want to make a quick profit with newly FDA approved drug and worry about the lawsuits later. But in this case, there's no profit involved nor safety studies needed. So, what's their agenda?...to vindicate past EPO users? Lol. And if it's inexperience or incompetence, I find it hard to believe with academics at that level.

The design is not that poor. They employed randomization and blinding and an objective endpoint. Studies are designed to move research forward in small pieces. The researchers here took a stab and seeing how epo would affect results in a one day race. The next step is to build on this.

like someone else pointed out earlier, the effects of EPO are more likely to be seen with the ability to handle the training load. Pre vs post VO2 would also be interesting to see.

Dr. Mark Burnley, a physiology professor at the University of Kent and noted expert in endurance physiology, took to Twitter to criticize the study as “quite frankly, awful,” noting several flaws. (Gregoire Millet, a professor of exercise physiology at the University of Lausanne, tweeted “100 percent agree!” and Ross Tucker, the physiologist and writer known for the Science in Sport blog, also said he agreed with Dr. Burnley’s verdict.)

Although I'm pretty sure elite cyclists used EPO and it helped them, I also think a lot of what Canova writes sounds quite reasonable. For one, we don't know what else these people are taking. It might be like with traditional medicine. They take a whole bunch of stuff, most of it isn't active, some of it even hurts, and one or two things make a huge difference, and no one is really sure which is which. The science is based on controlled studies of non elite athletes; the reality is neither controlled nor non elite.

There is a lot of nuance in what he says and a lot of you aren't reading it very careful. His argument is specifically that it doesn't help elite (he means people that can maybe get to challenge for WR) runners in 10K-marathon distances. He indicates that he does think it helps as a shortcut when recovering from injury, or for altitude trained athletes living at sea level, or for 1500m runners doing a lot of speed training, or for second tier athletes trying to get up in the world. I'm not saying he's right, but I am saying that, as a trained scientist, a lot of what he writes reads like what an expert writes when talking about what he knows - there's a lot of qualification and contextualization that's either simply impossible for the lay person or doesn't mean much to the lay person. I take it seriously for that. Also I'm not inclined to respect the so called sports scientists very much, because most of what they publish (as a big group) is pretty bad.

Mr. Obvious wrote:

Can somebody post the full study?

The study is here:

(17)30105-9/fulltext?elsca1=tlpr

The study is not really behind a paywall. If you only get the abstract, just log in using a fake email address, verification is not used.

Here's more discussion on the study:

I am glad this article came out.

The pharma kings have been pushing EPO as a performance enhancer to make billions, but it's all placebo. Thankfully it's being challenged, as Canova has stated - EPO does not make a 12:37 guy a 12:20 guy. Just not possible.

I think everyone forgets that Armstrong, Hamilton, etc., were taking a cocktail of drugs, including testosterone and HGH.. both proven to work (and kill).

kh wrote:

The pharma kings have been pushing EPO as a performance enhancer to make billions,

Actually, that's not true. It's a myth. Pharma companies have not been marketing EPO as a performance enhancer for over two decades. In fact, if you look at Amgen's FDA filing for EPO, it basically says that if you use the stuff, you are likely to die.

These pharma companies don't give a rat's ass about the athletic market. It's just a nuisance that gives their product a bad name. The real market is the anemic kidney patients. DaVita dialysis centers are by far the biggest customers for EPO.

helping hands wrote:

Mr. Obvious wrote:

Can somebody post the full study?

The study is here:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhae/article/PIIS2352-3026

(17)30105-9/fulltext?elsca1=tlpr

The study is not really behind a paywall. If you only get the abstract, just log in using a fake email address, verification is not used.

Here's more discussion on the study:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=8288188

Where exactly is the study located?