Projets de recherche

Ce document n'est disponible qu'en anglais.

Description à venir.

Summary

Des facteurs intrinsèques et extrinsèques contribuent à la vulnérabilité au dopage sportif; ils s’arriment avec des facteurs situationnels pour exacerber le risque de dopage. Des défis majeurs dans la lutte au dopage demeurent : l’identification de leurs facteurs de vulnérabilité; le sentiment de sécurité psychologique des sportifs à se confier avec intégrité sur leur utilisation de substances dopantes; et l’élaboration d’interventions significatives.

L’étude proposée s’inscrit dans la lignée des dispositions du Code mondial antidopage 2021. Nous émettons l’hypothèse que les facteurs de vulnérabilité et leur prépondérance varient dans le parcours du sportif en fonction du sport pratiqué. Nous déterminerons la prépondérance de ces facteurs en fonction de l’intention de dopage de l’athlète selon trois sports qui nécessitent différentes capacités physiques, puis ils seront caractérisés dans le parcours du sportif. Le cadre conceptuel Life cycle model of performance enhancement soutiendra notre processus de recherche (Petroczi A, 2008).

Nous faisons aussi l’hypothèse que l’implication d’une personne de confiance dans le parcours du sportif pourrait améliorer le processus d’identification des facteurs de vulnérabilité au dopage. Nous élaborerons des pistes d’interventions préventives et significatives en prévention du dopage qui sont ciblées selon le sport et qui impliqueront les personnes déterminantes du parcours du sportif.

Une synthèse transversale de la littérature (sciences sociales et santé) sera réalisée pour cartographier les outils de mesure validés permettant d’identifier les facteurs de vulnérabilité et l’intention au dopage sportif. Les forces et faiblesses des questionnaires seront discutées par l’équipe de recherche pour sélectionner les meilleurs questionnaires qui nous permettrons d’établir des associations entre les facteurs de vulnérabilité et l’intention de dopage des sportifs à l’étude. Nous élaborerons aussi un questionnaire pour caractériser les personnes les plus déterminantes dans le parcours du sportif. Les questionnaires seront administrés auprès de 300 sportifs (hockey n=100, football n=100, soccer n=100), hommes et femmes, âgés entre 18 et 25 ans.

Le recrutement se fera via les équipes sportives du Réseau Sport Éducation Québec qui sont sous la responsabilité clinique des médecins de l’équipe de recherche et de cliniques avec qui nous collaborons. Les questionnaires électroniques autoadministrés seront envoyés aux sportifs par leur entraineur principal via courriel. La participation sera volontaire. Les questionnaires auront une vingtaine de questions, et environ 20 minutes seront nécessaires pour y répondre. L’analyse des données sera soutenue par les logiciels SPSS (quantitatif) et NVivo (qualitatif) et sera réalisée selon le sport pratiqué et les caractéristiques socio-démographiques.

Ce document n'est disponible qu'en anglais.

Ce document n'est disponible qu'en français

Ce document n'est disponible qu'en anglais.

WADA has repeatedly encouraged social science research projects to take a regional perspective. The Caribbean is one region where systematic research on doping has been absent, despite calls for action (Acevedo et al., 2011). The paucity of doping research on Caribbean countries is surprising given the region’s strong sporting tradition and history. Sport is part of the Caribbean’s regional identity (CARICOM Commission on Youth Development, 2010), as witnessed by their success internationally. For instance, at the 2016 Olympic Games, 5% of Gold medals were won by Caribbean countries (Jordens, 2016).

Description coming soon.

Code: T20M03RV

Recent research has demonstrated that the criterion of discrimination between allowed and prohibited administrations of GCs needs to be compound specific. For some GCs, largely detected in doping controls, no sufficient data is available, and the objective of this project is to perform excretion studies with these GCs to generate the data needed to define the reporting levels and the washout periods.

The project will be focused on dexamethasone (DEX), methylprednisolone (MP) and deflazacort (DEF).

The research will be focused on the following specific objectives:

• To perform excretion studies of DEX, MP and DEF with administration of one single oral dose. For DEX, multiple oral doses will be also studied.
• To measure concentrations in urine of the parent compounds and the main metabolite in case of DEF, to evaluate the reporting lebels and washout periods.
• To measure concentrations of the compounds and cortisol in plasma, to evalulate the concordance of the urinary reporting levels and washout periods proposed with plasma concentrations of the active drug and the systemic effect

Main findings

Glucocorticoids (GCs) are prohibited in-competition by all injectable routes (including intraarticular and periarticular routes) in addition to oral and rectal administrations. In out-ofcompetition periods, there is no restriction of use. Since most GCs are marketed in different administration forms, the distinction between administration routes is needed to ensure safe treatments by allowed administration routes and to detect the use of prohibited administration routes during competitions. The regulations of GCs in sports were revisited in 2022, and new criteria were established for some of the compounds. In the present study, the discrimination criteria was evaluated for three GCs: dexamethasone (DEX), methylprednisolone (MP) and deflazacort (DEF).

Five clinical studies which involved oral administration of GCs to healthy volunteers were performed: single oral dose of DEX (4 mg, n=8), multiple oral dose of DEX (2mg/12h/5 days, n=8), single oral dose of MP (12 mg, n=8), multiple oral dose of MP (12 mg/3 days, n=8) and single oral dose of DEF (30 mg, n=8). Urine and plasma samples were collected before, during and after the treatments, and both the urinary and plasmatic excretion profiles of each GCs and their metabolites were evaluated using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. Overall, the results of the project demonstrate that the minimum reporting levels (MRL) of 60 ng/mL for DEX, 30 ng/mL of MP and 30 ng/mL of desacetyldeflazacort (DEF metabolite) are suitable to detect oral administration of the compounds and the washout-period of 3 days for oral administration is also adequate for these GCs. Results obtained in this project provide additional data that supports that criteria based on substance-specific MRL improve the discrimination between prohibited and permitted use of GCS in sports.

Code: T20M02DM

The differential immunoassays to detect doping with recombinant human growth hormone (hGH) have been in use at WADA accredited laboratories for more than 10 years now. From the beginning, the assays were produced in the coated tube (CT) format. In the past, this format, where the specific antibodies are coated to plastic tubes, and the final assay signal is determined by a tube luminometer, was very popular for immunoassays used in laboratory medicine and research applications. However, it meanwhile has been largely abandoned, and the respective assays were switched to the so-called microtiter plate (MTP) format. Here, the antibodies are coated to 96 wells of a plastic plate, and the final assay signal is read by a plate luminometer. The microplate format has advantages in terms of production, but also in terms of workflow in the laboratory. As a consequence of the grossly reduced use of CT assays in laboratories worldwide, production capacities for such CT assays become rare, and might become unavailable in the near future. To ensure continued production and availability of the differential immunoassays it is suggested to convert these assays to the MTP format now. While assay ingredients (and particularly the monoclonal antibodies involved) remain unaffected by the conversion to the MTP format, and it has been demonstrated for many assays used in clinical routine that key parameters such as assay specificity, linearity, reproducibility etc. remain unaffected by the change, the MTP format nevertheless has to be optimized and validated for each individual assay. The current project aims to establish the MTP format for the differential immunoassays.