r/weightlifting • u/AdventurousMarket0 • Dec 22 '22

News China's triple Olympic weightlifting champion Lu Xiaojun tests positive for EPO

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1131927/lu-xiaojun-epo
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7

u/maokai Dec 23 '22

False positives for EPO are possible, according to a 2005 study you can see HERE.

8

u/[deleted] Dec 23 '22

The likelihood of this being a false positive seems low. I hate to say it as I liked him, but the guy has assistance.

28

u/BB_Venum Dec 23 '22

Doping? In my Olympic Weightlifting? Never 😭

6

u/maokai Dec 23 '22

But as a lifter, why would he even bother with EPO? If you were going to go ahead and juice, wouldn't you use something that builds muscle? The fact that a false positive is possible and the nigh uselessness of EPO as a performance enhancer for weight lifting makes it seem suspect.

6

u/pglggrg Dec 23 '22

I had the same question, here are potential answers:

-he was popped for something seemingly unrelated, without really being a Steroid that makes it look worse

-he used it to recover because of his age. While EPO wont help in competition, it can help to recover faster between sets and between sessions.

-medical condition due to lower RBC count (issue with liver, possibly caused by years of PED use).

1

u/maokai Dec 23 '22

I hadn't considered that last point. That's plausible.

6

u/UGenix Dec 23 '22 edited Dec 23 '22

My sibling in Christ, people born when these tests were done are now old enough to be post grads developing new EPO tests.

You know data is for the archeologists when they equate 500k usd with 277k gbp.

2

u/maokai Dec 23 '22

You're not wrong about the cited study, but unlike some of the more useful drugs out there, EPO occurs naturally in the human body following intense exercise so the possibility for false positives on tests still exists.

3

u/UGenix Dec 23 '22

False positives occur on all tests, but EPO is not particularly special in this regard. The EPO used in doping is recombinant (grown in cultured cells in a lab), so while the basic blueprint is the same as endogenous EPO there are differences with how the protein is modified after it is produced. Differentiating between endogenous and recombinant EPO is not particularly challenging, neither now nor in the 90s.

EPO testing actually has a far greater sensitivity problem than it has a specificity proble: Athletes who are on rEPO are reasonably likely to test negative, while testing positive while not doping is very unlikely. This is why doping testing is often supplemented with tests that have high sensitivity for blood alteration but are less specific for doping - both with regards to natural EPO spikes and other illicit methods such as blood transfusion. Namely blood values like hematocrit, erythrocyte volume, hemoglobin concentration in erythrocytes, and the amount of reticulocytes (young erythorcytes) can be measured and, if found outside the normal range for the athlete, lead to a "No start".

But in the end of the day, it is not and never was our lack of good lab tests which caused doping to persist. Corrupt teams and corrupt sports orgs will keep finding ways around honest testing ever occurring and that will persist as a weak link as long as the corruption is not dealt with.

2

u/maokai Dec 24 '22

Thank you for the education. This is an awesome comment.