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The use of recombinant human erythropoietin (rhEPO), a stimulator of erythropoiesis, banned in sports because of the medical risk associated with thrombosis. Due to analytical difficulties to differentiate between natural human EPO (hEPO) and rhEPO, blood parameters of erythropoiesis such as contents of hemoglobin (cut-off value <17.5 g/dl for man, and <16.0 g/dl for women), hematocrit and reticulocytes (cut-off value <2.0%) were measured to focus the misuse of rhEPO. We conducted anti-doping test for 122 blood samples of the World Cup athletes. The mean values of key parameters are as follows; 14.5±1.0 g/dl for hemoglobin, 41.7±2.8% for hematocrit, and 1.3±0.4% for reticulocyte. Blood sample was found to be stable up to 8 hours for the reticulocyte measurement. In addition, the soluble transferrin receptor and ferritin levels were measured by immunoassay methods using plasma samples (n=28) in which the mean value was 0.8±0.5μg/ml and 54.6±33.7ng/ml, respectively. The results indicate that all samples tested were negative for the blood parameters of indirect anti-doping test for hEPO misuse. The statistical evaluation suggest that several other parameters such as red blood cell, mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration, mean corpuscular volume, mean corpuscular hemoglobin and white blood cell could be considered as factors influencing hEPO function in addition to five parameters mentioned.
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