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Joane states "I suspect if many of them tested, we would be seeing more
positive tests."
It isn't whether or not the active ingredient
tests, it's whether there's a test in use for competition testing that catches
it. I have to assume that in the interest of time the drug tests are
chemical in nature--gas or high-pressure liquid chromatography, mass spec, that
sort of thing. If the active ingredient doesn't belong to the same
chemical families as the targeted drugs, it won't test positive in traditional
chemical tests if the tests used don't cover it's chemical family.
Conversely, you could feed an herb which contains something chemically related
to a banned substance, and get a false positive even if it actually has no
effect in the animal at all. It depends on the sensitivity of the
tests being used to subtle diffrences in chemical
structure. If the test looks for the main chemical structure,
for example, and not the specific side chains which cause the drug to work, then
you could get a false positive.
For example: Suppose I wanted to test an
animal for perphenazine, and it hadn't had perphenazine but had been dewormed
the day before with phenothiazine. Phenothiazine is the parent compound of
perphenazine, piperazine, and acepromazine. If I use a chemical
test that's solely based on the presence of the phenothiazine ring
structure, the animal will test positive for perphenazine (this is purely
hypothetical, as I know nothing about specific tests for either one).
On the other hand, if I incubate it and perphenazine in cultures of
rat pituitary cells, then test the culture medium for prolactin, the
test on the phenothiazine would be expected to come back negative for
perphenazine. Same chemical family, vastly different
activities.
It goes back to the magical triangle of research...Speed, Accuracy, and
Precision. You can have any two of the 3 , but never all three.
Choosing speed means you sacrifice either accuracy or precision--usually the
precision on the drug tests is pretty high, so that leaves accuracy as the
sacrificial lamb. Thus, false positives. The chemical test in my example
probably would only take as long as running it through a piece of computerized
analytical equipment. The cell culture would take several days from
establishing the cells in culture, incubating the treatment, then testing the
medium for the key element--and prolactin assays take about 2 to 3 days just for
that assay. In this case, speed would be sacrificed for accuracy.
The one thing you WON'T see as being acceptable would be sacrificing
precision...a test that can't reliably produce a positive result on the target
drug is useless.
So it's a catch-22. I think the most logical practice to follow is
"when in doubt, don't." If an herbal supplement is touted as having "The
same effects as....." then chances are it's going to work at the same active
site or somewhere very similar. The fact that it doesn't show up on a
standard test for the product it mimics is, in my opinion, irrelevant. It
has the same effect, thus, the intent is the same and perhaps is worse, if
the point behind using the supplement is to dodge the testing and to have an
animal compete when it's health or soundness may actually be compromised.
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