This summer’s Olympics are set to be the toughest yet for substance-abusing athletes. Traditional tests are already identifying cases like Morocco’s Mariem Alaoui Selsouli, a gold-medal hopeful in the 1,500 meters who is now barred from competing in London after testing positive for the banned diuretic furosemide, which can help mask the use of steroids and other illicit substances. And this year scientists are adding more powerful techniques to their arsenal to catch those athletes that have begun to tailor their doping strategies to avoid detection.
The new tests cast a wider net by “using lots of different strategies,” explained Phil Teale, chief scientist in Medication & Doping Control at the drug-testing laboratory HFL Sport Science in the United Kingdom, “moving away from focused approaches” that can only detect a pre-defined set of substances.
Researchers have historically used mass spectrometry to identify anabolic steroids and other prohibited compounds, but this ...
