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The pandemic has accelerated the search for alternative solutions in the global anti-doping fight – the German NADA was also creative. She has further developed the so-called dried blood spot test: A doping control that athletes carry out alone, observed by an inspector via a mobile phone app. I can test the new weapon in the fight against doping for the ARD doping editorial team. It’s still in a small, sealed box. I can’t open it until the doping control officer calls me. Then the distance test begins: I’m in Potsdam, NADA inspector Stefan Trinks in Bonn.
Remote-Doping-Tests
Trinks explains: “This little device here, this is the blood collection device…” I stick the small plastic device with the big red button on my upper arm. I press the button, feel a small prick – nothing more. The test device remains in the field of view of my mobile phone camera the whole time – the controller at the other end is watching closely. And it recognizes when enough blood has flowed into the four chambers of the test device. They are about the size of a pinhead and yet it takes three minutes to fill them up. I then have to clamp the small container with the blood into a second device, where the blood is transferred to special paper and stored. “If you close it now – you have now punched out the spots in an A and a B sample chamber,” explains Trinks. Finally, I have to seal the sample – still closely monitored by Stefan Trinks. I put it in a prepaid envelope and the sample is now mailed to the lab.
years of research
The experts have been researching the distance test for years. The decisive breakthrough for the analysis of minimal amounts of blood came during the corona pandemic, as Hans Geyer, deputy head of the doping control laboratory in Cologne, confirms: “We now have the appropriate sensitivity and specificity of the analytical devices, which we did not have before. Substances from all substance classes on the WADA Prohibited List can be detected.”
The method is comparatively inexpensive and the samples are easy to store. An advantage, also when it comes to uncovering unconscious doping. Because with the Dried Blood Spot Test, testing can be carried out much more frequently and follow-up checks can be carried out in the event of abnormalities, says NADA CEO Andrea Gotzmann: “That you can then simply show: Is it a classic doping scenario, or is it possibly due to the contamination of a food supplement or something attributed to a perfidious attack.”
The new control procedure is currently in the final test phase with 24 top German athletes. The Dried Blood Spot Test will not replace the classic methods, but it can be used to close gaps in the control system.
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