Is gene doping already in use in the athletic field?

After a scientist at University of Pennsylvania showed a mouse able to carry three times its body weight, he has thousands of requests from athletes who wanted to be test subjects. A high school coach even wanted to inject the whole football team.

History has shown that high performance athletes are willing to compromise their own health to gain an edge and attain medals, records and honour. But the actual number of athletes currently experimenting with genetic enhancement is impossible to trace.  

Common sense and ‘horror stories’ would indicate that the risks of side-effects are still too frightening for athletes to enter genetic therapy for sports enhancing purposes. However, in a 1995 survey, nearly 200 aspiring American Olympians were asked if they would take a banned substance that would guarantee victory in every competition for five years and would then cause death; more than half answered yes, reports Jeremy Longman in New York Times.

Demand for Repoxygen
Widespread use of genetic doping is probably not the case yet, but interesting information was brought to light during a trial in the beginning of 2006 against the disgraced German athletics coach, Thomas Springstein.

Springstein was charged with administering steroids to young female athletes under his supervision. Amongst the prosecutor’s evidence against Springstein was an e-mail sent from Springstein to a doctor for a Dutch speedskating team asking for instructions on how to buy Repoxygen -  a genetically modified EPO-gene designed to treat anaemia-patients but which potentially could enhance an athlete’s endurance.

Repoxygen allows the body to switch on a gene when it discovers low oxygen levels. This stimulates the body's own production of EPO - the agent that produces the red blood cells which carry oxygen to the muscles. When oxygen levels have been raised, Repoxygen makes the gene switch off "providing an exquisite control mechanism for the production of EPO in situ" as stated in a press release from producers Oxford Biomedica.

Repoxygen has never been tested on humans, only on mice. And Oxford Biomedica has never started production of the drug as the company does not believe it can compete in a market where EPO is so readily available. Alan Kingsman, chief executive of Oxford Biomedica, says to The Times that Repoxygen remains in the fridge under close controls, and that he does not understand how it could have found its way on to the black market.

Athletes monitor genetic research
But according to Australian scientist Robin Parisotto athletes are closely monitoring the latest developments in genetic research.  After a scientist at University of Pennsylvania created a mouse that could haul three times its own body weight, he got thousands of requests from athletes wanting to volunteer as test subjects. Among them were a high school coach who wanted to inject the whole football team.

Meanwhile Genetic Technologies Ltd. – an Australian genetic testing company – is legally and publicly selling a DNA test on the Internet that detects variations in the ACTN3 gene.

This gene produces a protein that enhances the expression of so-called ‘fast twitch’ muscle fibres that are involved in power- and sprint-type activities - as opposed to endurance activities.

The DNA test reveals to the athletes whether they have inherited ‘repressing’ or ‘enhancing’ versions of the gene from their parents and hence which distribution of ‘fast twitch’ and ‘slow twitch’ muscle fibres they can expect to possess.

The test is not very precise but can be used as a good guiding principle for a runner who considers whether to concentrate on for example the 10000 meter or the 200 meter sprint.