Sydney's HGH spectre

Without an effective test for HGH, its abuse is inevitable

News that Australian custom officials have seized vials of what appears to be human growth hormone (HGH) will be greeted with despair by the organisers of the Sydney Olympics.

They were hoping that Sydney could avoid the suspicion and cynicism that has clouded past Games, but Thursday's discovery of HGH in an Uzbek official's bags does not bode well.

Last month, Sydney Organising Committee president Michael Knight said there would be tests for the stamina-improving blood-booster EPO, a drug which has ravaged cycling in recent years, but there would be no effective test for HGH.

The inference is unmistakeable. If you want to cheat - and HGH, which aids muscle growth, is believed to offer dramatic performance improvements - then human growth hormone should be your tipple.

Yuan Yuan was sent home in disgrace in 1998

This drug, which has been helping stunted children grow normally since 1959, first hit the back pages in the lead-up to the 1998 Perth world swimming championships, when 13 vials of the substance were found in the luggage of Chinese swimmer Yuan Yuan.

Chinese swimming has been the focus of suspicion throughout the 1990s, due to remarkable, and unprecedented, success in the pool coupled with frequent positive drugs tests out of it.

'HGH Games'

China, however, is not alone in attracting distrust. Drug-cheating was believed by many observers to have been rife at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, which came to be dubbed the HGH Games.

More recently, Australia's Olympic stars, and swimming sensation Ian Thorpe in particular, have been hit by doubts.

The misgivings over Thorpe, a hot favourite for gold in Sydney, have come about largely as a result of his size 17 feet.

Side effects

The abnormal growth of feet, hands and face, has been identified by experts as a side effect of HGH use. More life-threatening side effects range from high blood pressure to heart failure.

The Thorpedo has not escaped HGH suspicion

The hormone, however, is a naturally occuring microscopic protein substance produced by the brain's pituitary gland.

Secreted in short pulses during the first hours of sleep, it is made throughout a person's life, but in greater quantity during youth.

Before the advent of genetic engineering, the only source of HGH was from dead bodies - pituitary glands were removed from corpses, processed and the hormones were then injected into people who were growth hormone deficient.

Synthetic HGH is now readily available and widely used - AIDS patients, for example, are given HGH to reverse muscle wastage.

Undetectable

What makes HGH so attractive to unscrupulous athletes is its relative undetectability.

The only reliable test currently in use has to be performed within 36 hours of the hormone being administered.

Short of catching an athlete in the act, this 36-hour restriction means non-competition testing would have to be greatly extended. It would also require blood samples to be taken, which is not currently the case.

Scientists are convinced that a reliable test for HGH is not far away, and the chief obstacles remain administrative details, not scientific problems.

Sports administrators, however, will be left with the feeling that no matter what is done to combat HGH, the drugs cheats will remain one step ahead in the seemingly endless game of doping and detection.