Call for hair tests to get to the 'Root' of drug and alcohol abuse in sports
From cricket's Joe Root to football's Rio Ferdinand, hair strand analysis provides wider proof of 'drug clean'
News that every professional cricketer in England and Wales has been "hair tested" for illegal drugs indicates the growing role that hair strand analysis is taking in sport.
As cricket, rugby, cycling and Australian Football organisations incorporate hair strand analysis as part of their drug and alcohol policy, other sports are beginning to investigate the possible advantages of its introduction.
“Hair analysis provides a long-term profile of drug use.” explains Susan Carter-Edwards for Trimega Laboratories, the UK’s leading scientific hub for hair testing. “Hair records drug use over weeks or months in comparison to the days or hours that a urine sample would provide. Each centimetre of hair equates to approximately a month’s growth, so a 3cm length of hair will profile about 3 months history of drug use or abstinence.”
In 2004, the England and Manchester United football player, Rio Ferdinand, famously employed hair analysis to prove he was no drug cheat, after he had missed a drug test a few months earlier. The result of that test was accepted by the FA, but it is yet to encourage clubs' use of hair analysis to gain a better picture of how significant the issue is in the sport.
"If a sporting body wants to gain a truer understanding of how wide a problem drug use is in their field - or to prove that it isn't a problem - then hair strand analysis will help." says Carter-Edwards. "Measuring use over a few months provides a broader profile than a three day test, and also acts as a more effective deterrent."
Every hair follicle has its own blood supply, so any drug traces in the blood will feed into the core of the hair, and after about a week, that hair will grow out of the skin.
The science of hair testing was developed in the USA during the 1970's. In the UK it began in the 1990's to help drug addiction clinics to match drug users self-reporting with actual drug consumption. Since then it has become an important part of the jigsaw of evidence for courts determining child custody cases; for pre-employment testing for safety conscious organisations such as the police and security agencies, and as a measurement of success in rehabilitation for employees, such as Tube drivers. Tens of thousands of tests are submitted to courts annually.
How is hair analysis carried out?
Trimega’s laboratories use liquid-chromatography mass spectrometer analysis, or LC-MS, to detect drugs in hair. When someone ingests a drug, it is dissolved into the body and circulated via the bloodstream, and traces are deposited in hair. LC-MS can detect as low as picograms of drug metabolites - that’s a trillionth of a gram – in hair samples.
“Each biological sample type is useful in different contexts.” Carter-Edwards concludes. “If it helps an inquest to know whether someone had a lifestyle that included regular drug use, then hair analysis is a proven tool that will help inform the coroner. Likewise, if a sports body really wants to check how significant a drug issue there is in their particular sport, be it recreational drugs or steroid abuse – then employing hair tests will gain a broad and accurate profile of drug misuse.”
ENDS
askus@trimegalabs.com www.trimegalabs.com
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Established in London in 2005, Trimega Laboratories is a specialist in the legal testing for substance misuse and in paternity testing. Its core business is laboratory-based analysis of hair samples that provide accurate historical records of alcohol or drugs dependency over a one to 12 month period. In the UK, Trimega’s clients include: family law specialists, law courts, social services and employers such as police forces.Trimega Laboratories was acquired by the Ingemino Group in 2012 and since then the business has undergone a complete overhaul with new management and investment.