New Standards Improve Detection of Doping Peptides by Tracking Degradation

Growth Hormone-Releasing Peptides (GHRPs) and Growth Hormone-Releasing Hormones (GHRHs) are synthetic peptides often misused in sports for their anabolic and performance-enhancing effects. Detecting these substances in anti-doping efforts is challenging because they can rapidly degrade in biological samples, making their presence difficult to confirm. This study addresses the critical need to understand the degradation pathways and stability of these doping peptides to develop more robust and reliable detection methods.

The study revealed significant differences in the stability profiles among the tested peptides, both in serum and enzymatic environments. GHRP-6 demonstrated the fastest degradation, with over 70% of the initial peptide degraded within 4 hours in the presence of trypsin, and approximately 55% degraded in human serum over the same period. In contrast, CJC-1295 showed remarkable stability, retaining over 90% of its intact form after 24 hours in human serum and over 85% even with enzymatic exposure. The most critical finding was the identification of specific, reproducible degradation fragments for each peptide, providing unique 'fingerprints' for their breakdown products that can be targeted in forensic analysis. Overall, enzymatic degradation was consistently 2-3 times faster than serum-mediated degradation for most peptides, highlighting the role of specific proteases. For example, GHRP-2 exhibited a 43% reduction in concentration after 8 hours in serum, compared to a 78% reduction under enzymatic conditions.