Detection of anabolic steroids is fast becoming a major industry. Laboratories have cropped up all over the nation and involve some of the best scientists in the country. The majority of such laboratories cater to the sporting industry and help detect illegal substance in the urine.
Most companies use the technique of Liquid chromatography-Mass spectrometry to detect anabolic steroids in the urine, hair or skin. The name sounds complex but it is a very simple technique. First a standard anabolic steroid is injected into the machine. The machine recognizes it and develops a curve with peaks. The peaks are then depicted on a timed graph. The data is stored in the computer as a reference. Then an unknown drug is injected into the machine. If it is the same drug as the standard, it will appear in the same position at the same time. This immediately tells the technician that the unknown drug has matched a standard drug. The latest devices can even compute dose of the drug. The amount of drug that can be detected with the latest machines is in nanograms (10-9 g). for those who do not know what this number means- take a sugar crystal and dissolve it in about 1 liter of fluid. Take a small amount of fluid (the size of a pinhead) and the machines can detect sugar molecules in that fluid.
When it comes to sports, urine/hair samples are randomly collected and injected into the machine and all peaks are analyzed to see if they match any known peaks from reference steroids.
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