Word: epo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...least not according to the French sporting daily L'Equipe. Its four-page cover story on Tuesday, headlined "The Armstrong Lie," claims to have pieced together what it says is "incontestable" evidence that in 1999-the year of his first Tour victory-Armstrong used the banned substance EPO. "The extraordinary champion, the escapee from cancer, has become a legend by means of a lie," wrote L'Equipe...
...EPO may shunt more oxygen to the muscles, but it comes at a price. "If you take too much EPO," explains WADA's Dr. Gary Wadler, professor of clinical medicine at New York University, "the production of red blood cells is excessive, and the blood becomes viscous--it's like sludge." In the late 1980s, when EPO became available, nearly 20 European cyclists died of causes that some experts suspect were linked to EPO...
Some athletes are banking on a different strategy: gene therapy. Researchers have developed techniques to insert EPO-producing genes into cells so they can generate additional amounts of EPO long term. But again, says Wadler, "since overproduction of red cells is potentially lethal, this technique requires a pharmacological on-off switch." Researchers are using various techniques to devise controllable EPO delivery systems, in which genes inserted into the skin can be turned on and off either by taking a pill or rubbing a chemical on the skin. Other scientific groups are encapsulating genetically engineered EPO-producing cells in man-made...
...broad frontier. The process theoretically can be manipulated at many points. "It is inevitable that other pharmacological avenues to stimulate red-cell production will be explored--and exploited," says Dr. Michael Ashenden, project coordinator for a global blood-doping research consortium funded by WADA and USADA. "Putting in an EPO gene is only one way to get the same result...
Instead of finding novel ways of delivering EPO, for example, some researchers are hoping to harness modified versions of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying workhorse in red blood cells. Artificial blood has long been a dream of doctors who face perpetual blood shortages, and in recent years that dream is closer to becoming reality. One promising approach involves extracting hemoglobin from living cells and using it alone as an oxygen transport system. Unfortunately, naked hemoglobin is quickly broken down in the body. Housing the hemoglobin in an artificial cell, or modifying the hemoglobin so it remains stable, could solve this problem...