title: Blood transfusion in sports.
abstract: Blood transfusion is an effective and unmediated means of increasing the number of red blood cells in the circulation in order to enhance athletic performance. Blood transfusion became popular in the 1970s among elite endurance athletes and declined at the end of the 1980s with the introduction of recombinant erythropoietin. The successive implementation in 2001 of a direct test to detect exogenous erythropoietin and in 2004 of a test to detect allogeneic blood transfusion forced cheating athletes to reinfuse fully immunologically compatible blood. The implementation of indirect markers of blood doping stored in an Athlete's Biological Passport provides a powerful means to deter any form of blood transfusion.
authors.affiliation: Swiss Laboratory for Doping Analyses, Chemin des Croisettes 22, 1066, Epalinges, Switzerland. Sylvain.Giraud@chuv.ch
authors.forename: Sylvain
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Giraud
authors.forename: Pierre-Edouard
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Sottas
authors.forename: Neil
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Robinson
authors.forename: Martial
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Saugy
mesh_terms: D054874:Athletic Performance; D001803:Blood Transfusion; D001804:Blood Transfusion, Autologous; D004300:Doping in Sports / Q000379:methods*; D004921:Erythropoietin / Q000097:blood; D006801:Humans
chemical_list: D004921:Erythropoietin