DBS in Doping

Dried blood spot (DBS) sampling and high performance liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC–MS) has been demonstrated in the routine testing of athletes for anabolic steroid esters. In the study published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis,¹ the developed method requires only a 20 μL sample of capillary blood that can be sampled from a heel, ear, or finger.

The authors applied DBS to the sampling of whole blood spiked with a cocktail of nandrolone and eight anabolic steroid esters derived from testosterone, nondrolone, and trenbolone. Proof-of-concept was demonstrated by applying the method to 10 healthy volunteers who had ingested a single dose of 80 mg testosterone undecanoate. Capillary blood was collected using a finger prick and 20 μL was spotted onto DBS sampling cards. HPLC–MS–MS analysis detected concentration levels between 2–8 h post-administration as would be expected. – B.D.

Reference

1. L. Tretzel, A. Thomas, H. Geyer, et al., Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis96, 21–30 (2014).

This article is from The Column. The full issue can be found here