Doping agents and their analytical control

Doping is defined as the use of substances and/or forbidden methods for the artificial performance-enforcement of an athlete during competition or in the preparation period. A survey is given on the misuse of doping agents in recent years, with special emphasis on stimulants, beta blockers, diuretics, exogenous and endogenous steroids and peptide hormones. The introduction of new doping substances including perfluorocarbons, ecdysteroids, synthetic hemoglobin and peptide hormones (e.g. growth-hormone) precursors is described. Hyphenated separation techniques achieved great progress in doping analysis and control, of which some of the recent methods such as LC-MS, GC-MS CE-MS are briefly reviewed here.