New Hair Test Boosts Anti-Doping Efforts for SARMs and Modulators

Performance-enhancing drugs, including SARMs (Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators) and metabolic modulators, are frequently abused in sports, posing significant challenges for anti-doping agencies. Traditional detection methods in urine or blood often have limited detection windows, allowing athletes to evade detection. This study addresses the critical need for a robust and long-term analytical method to screen for these illicit substances in human hair, which offers an extended window of detection.

The developed UHPLC-MS/MS method demonstrated excellent analytical performance, achieving high sensitivity and specificity for all target compounds, including various SARMs and metabolic modulators. The method exhibited good linearity and recovery across relevant concentration ranges, confirming its suitability for forensic applications. > Crucially, this study achieved the first-ever identification of the SARM S23 in an authentic human hair sample obtained from a doping case, providing concrete evidence of its presence and the method's efficacy. This qualitative finding significantly advances the field of anti-doping by confirming the presence of these substances over extended periods, which is a substantial improvement over short-window blood or urine tests. The method's validation ensures its reliability for future anti-doping and forensic investigations.