Rigamonti Antonello E, Cella Silvano G, Marazzi Nicoletta, Di Luigi Luigi, Sartorio Alessandro, Müller Eugenio E
Department of Medical Pharmacology, University of Milan, via Vanvitelli 32, 20129 Milan, Italy.
Trends Endocrinol Metab. 2005 May-Jun;16(4):160-6. doi: 10.1016/j.tem.2005.03.009.
In the past two decades, growth hormone (GH) has been considered as a performance-enhancing drug in the sport world, certainly favoured by the awareness that there is not yet an approved method for detecting its abuse. Because resting or random measurements of plasma GH concentrations per se are meaningless, new methods have been devised to evaluate plasma levels of GH-sensitive substances that are more stable, and hence detectable, than the hormone itself. This review discusses some of the most recently proposed approaches, including a diagnostic algorithm, based on the timed application of different tests, which, collectively, would have a high diagnostic capability.
