Detection of doping with recombinant human growth hormone

Detection of doping with recombinant human growth hormone is one of the challenges for antidoping analysis. This review focuses on the most important relevant publications that provide insight into the laboratory measurement of human growth hormone (hGH), antibodies and standards, the isoform approach and the biomarker approach. The isoform approach monitors the changes of hGH molecular isoform composition in serum and was applied at the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004, Turin in 2006 and Beijing in 2008. The markers approach detects a formula score, which reflects the changes in concentration of IGF-I and P-III-P. All these methodologies measure the concentrations of growth hormone and its isoforms for isoform approach, or the concentrations of IGF-I and P-III-P. All factors that affect these measurements should be taken into account for the development of methods to detect doping with recombinant hGH.