Marion Jones all set to join basketball

Marion Jones, the disgraced sprinter, who lost five Olympic medals after testing positive for steroids and jailed for lying to federal prosecutors has signed for the Tulsa Shock, Women's National Basketball Association team.

Jones spent six months in a federal prison after she lied about use of steroids and her role in a cheque fraud.

From Guardian.co.uk:

Jones, who was awarded gold medals for winning the 100m, 200m and 4 x 400m relays at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and two bronzes in the long jump and 4x100m, admitted two years ago that she had taken steroids before, during and after the Games and was stripped of her five medals. She also spent about six months in a Texas federal prison for lying about doping and her role in a cheque fraud.

Jones said playing for the Shock is not about her past but instead fulfils her dream of playing basketball against some of the best players in the world.

"The word redemption is not in my vocabulary," Jones said at a news conference, flanked by the team's president, Steve Swetoha, and coach Nolan Richardson. "I'm a competitor, I want to play against the best in the world, and I know that I will be doing that."

The former sprinter may have been a success with athletics but her association with disgrace and doping is bound to have a serious effect on how sport fans accept her.

Harvard Chemists synthesize HGH group

The synthesis of a family of hormones that could be of as much medical importance as the steroid drugs are today has been made by a Harvard Research Group. The steroids that can be classified as another group of hormones are the active ingredients in drugs such as birth control pills.

Detailed report of the research appeared in an issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

From Thecrimson.com:

Major Effects

Earlier researchers have intensively studied the prostaglandins because of indications that even as little as a billionth of an ounce of the hormones could have major effects on many different body processes.

Some have been found to speed up or to slow heart rate, to raise or lower blood pressure, to control deposits of fat inside blood vessels, or to change nervous activity in the brain. And present studies are testing their capability in birth control and the ability to withstand stress.

Icelandic Sheep

But all of these studies have been limited by the difficulty of obtaining working amounts of the hormones in pure form. The largest of the present meager sources is in extracts from the tests of Icelandic sheep.

Since all the prostaglandins have a closely similar chemical structure--based on a backbone of a ring of 5 carbon atoms to which 15 others are attached--synthesis of all members of the family should be a relatively easy matter. This will make possible their production in large enough quantities for research into their medical uses.

The group, which was led by Elias J. Corey, professor of Chemistry and chairman of the Chemistry department, was able to synthesize five members of a class of fifteen hormones called as prostaglandins.

Potential detection system for performance enhancing drugs

A potential detection system that can be used to test athletes for performance enhancing drugs is currently under the development stage by scientists at the University of Nottingham.

The research is considered to provide a more reliable way of detecting drug molecules in the body.

From News-medical.net:

Some methods overcome these problems but add carbon to the target molecule, irreversibly overprinting the carbon source ‘signal’. The research into hydropyrolysis, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, has developed a new approach that delicately strips molecules of their ‘sticky’ parts but retains the carbon skeleton intact, allowing easy detection of the carbon source.

The new detection system could allow scientists to pinpoint banned substances in an athlete’s system — even the new designer steroid specifically manufactured to avoid detection recently uncovered by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada).

Professor Snape added: "Our discovery of a method to produce easy to handle molecules without destroying their carbon source signal opens up the whole body’s molecules to intense scientific scrutiny."

The research is led by Professor Colin Snape in the University’s School of Chemical, Environmental and Mining Engineering and published recently in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry.

Two-year ban for British hurdler

Callum Priestley, the British hurdler, has been handed over a two-year ban and possibly face a lifetime Olympic ban after testing positive for drugs.

UK Anti-doping confirmed that Priestley's suspension will run until February 2012 after he tested positive for Clenbuterol, the steroid used in asthma medications.

From Guardian.co.uk:

The National Anti-Doping Panel's written decision says Priestley, who won the 60m hurdles at the world indoor trials in February, was unable to explain how the Clenbuterol came to be in his body. He initially suggested that the most likely source was contamination of supplements that he had been taking on the advice of a nutritionist, but scientific tests have failed to detect any trace of those.

"The athlete now believes that the most likely source was meat from animals or poultry which had been treated with steroids, but again it has not proved possible to produce any scientific or other evidence to substantiate the theory that any meat which he ate in South Africa was so contaminated," says the NADP report.

As Priestley was unable to prove no fault or negligence on his part, the panel imposed a two-year ban back-dated to February this year when he was initially suspended. He does have the right to appeal.

Andy Parkinson, the chief executive of UK Anti-Doping, said that this case should act as a warning to all athletes that there is no place to hide from their responsibilities, no matter where they are, or whether they are competing.

Cornette says WWE is all about use of steroids

The veteran commentator, promoter and booker for TNA, Jim Cornette, recently aired his sentiments over the worsening condition of wrestling by disclosing that more and more wrestlers are being forced into drugs. The remark is seen by many as a dent to image of Vince McMahon and past reports that the WWE owner doesn't encourage the use of steroids.

It was also revealed by Cornette that McMahon is keen to promote larger-than-life stars in WWE and the wrestlers are often left with no choice but to embrace steroids for keeping a high-profile job in the wrestling business.

From Pwtorch.com:

Cornette views Andrew "Test" Martin as an example of a wrestler being re-hired because he has a certain look and not for any additional talent he could bring to the table. Cornette says Martin probably felt the need to look a certain way, which required use of steroids.

"As far as Test goes, it's a tragedy that a guy is 33 years old and is gone because he got involved in professional wrestling," Cornette said recently on the Who's Slamming Who podcast. "In the old days, everybody was a cowboy and if they did drugs, they did it for recreation because they were making too much money. That's almost easier to take, to me, than guys feeling like they have to do drugs to keep a job or they have to do drugs because their bodies are so broken down from the style that they get addicted to them."

Cornette says the combination of hardcore wrestling and fewer jobs in wrestling have made it difficult for wrestlers to stay away from an addictive lifestyle. Moves don't mean as much, so wrestlers have to use weapons that lead to pain pill addiction. Fewer jobs are available with only one major player, so wrestlers have to look a certain way to get major-league work.

There just don't seem to be a coming back for the wrestlers, especially when they have shorter life-spans in the business and in life.

Investigations against Mark McGwire for steroid use

The retired slugger, Mark McGwire, has refused to identify players participating in Major League baseball making use of steroids.

McGwire, one of six current and former stars appearing before the House Government Reform Committee, however did not say if he had made use of steroids himself.

From News.bbc.co.uk:

McGwire, who ranks sixth in Major League history with 583 home runs, said: "Steroids are wrong. Don't take them. It gives you nothing but false hope.

"What I will not do, however, is participate in naming names and implicating my friends and teammates."

Former batter Canseco wrote a best-selling book which claimed steroids were rampant in baseball. In it he wrote that he injected McGwire.

However, Canseco told the hearing he could not fully answer its questions because of concerns his testimony could be used against him.

Earlier, US Senator Jim Bunning, a major league player for 17 years, said: "Baseball needs to know we are watching.

"They owe it to all of us to prove they are fixing this terrible problem. If not, we will have to do it for them."

Henry Waxman, Committee ranking minority member, remarked that the baseball league has failed to honor trust and has not acted in a responsible manner to protect ball players.

Image fix is biggest reason to use steroids for men

Young men are increasingly making use of steroids for improving their self-image. It is considered that the numbers of anabolic steroid users is growing at an all-time high and the same has been alarmingly high over the last 3-5 years though the official figures do not reveal the complete truth.

The issue was the subject of a conference being held in Liverpool.

From News.bbc.co.uk:

Head of Substance Use at the Centre Jim McVeigh said the increasing use of such drugs was a major public health issue.

He claims that many of those who take these drugs, in particular anabolic steroids, are suffering with both physically and psychologically effects.

Dr Rob Dawson, the medical officer at the Drugs in Sport Clinic, said he believed too much time had been spent concentrating on the use of performance enhancing drugs by athletes when this was just the tip of the iceberg.

"The main body [of users] consists of anabolic steroids users who are not engaged in competitive sport.

The event was organized by The Centre for Public Health at John Moores University in Liverpool.

Lesser cardiovascular events for post-transplant patients without steroids

Benefits are easy to come for post-transplant patients not administered with corticosteroids when compared to their counterparts on steroids, as per transplantation researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC).

This finding was presented by researchers with the Division of transplantation and department of internal medicine at the American Transplant Congress (ATC), the annual meeting of the American Society of Transplantation on May 1-5 in San Diego.

From Sciencedaily.com:

UC researchers are also reporting results of shared protocols on the bortezomib treatment for antibody-mediated rejection. After presenting their bortezomib findings at the 2009 ATC, UC researchers created the START collaborative to share standard of care treatment protocols for bortezomib therapies. Through the collaborative, transplant centers worldwide have requested this information to treat individual patients with a variety of solid organ transplant types.

"The information shared from this partnership represents an international collaborative experience of treating this unmet need in transplantation that inevitably results in graft loss," says Alloway. "Because transplant centers may have one to five antibody-mediated cases a year, it's difficult to assess a potential new treatment. But when you are able to share every center's cases together in one report, it's easier to identify trends that support definitive design of future controlled trials."

The researchers reported that post-transplant patients off steroids experienced fewer cardiovascular events, improved graft survival rates, and reduced early mortality than patients administered with steroids.