Screening for pharmaceuticals and anabolic steroids

By Vincent Cirimele, ChemTox, France

There is a real risk of general contamination of the food chain by active substances hazardous to human health following environmental pollution of water and soils by medicines used in hospitals, or the prohibited use of anabolic steroids and pharmaceuticals by cattle breeders. Furthermore, there have been several cases of doping among professional athletes which have lead to a suspicion of adulteration with banned substances (e.g. food supplements and dietary products) of food intended for sportsmen.

The diversity of food matrices concerned and the variety of regulated or banned substances have motivated ChemTox to set up several analytical approaches using tandem mass spectrometry for the identification and quantification of  such contamination. Using these methods, it is possible to measure more than one hundred substances, such as pharmaceuticals or more specifically anabolic agents (beta-2 agonists, stimulants, narcotics, corticosteroids, alcohol or betablockers).

Current applications include the detection of anabolic steroids in food intended for athletes, pharmaceuticals in water and prohibited substances in urine, blood and hair. These analyses can routinely be undertaken by ChemTox in 10 working days for a large variety of matrices such as nutritional supplements and products with high energy value and enriched in proteins, vitamins, carbohydrates (e.g. energy drinks, concentrated gels, dried products, capsules, cereal bars).

The laboratory is under COFRAC accreditation to the ISO 17025 standard for human hair in order to evaluate doping practices by athletes, but this approach can be also applied to animal hair to check for the long-term use of prohibited anabolic products by cattle breeders wishing to increase the muscle mass of their animals.

Contact : labochemtox@labochemtox.com