Abstract
Special attention has been paid to human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) for athlete doping control because it stimulates the endogenous production of testosterone and epitestosterone without increasing the T/E ratio which is a doping indicator for the exogenous administration of testosterone. Even though the IOC banned the use of hCG, a detection method has not been decided upon since there are a variety of immunoassay kits available on the market. We evaluated three kits in terms of their performance characteristics. The assay value of the control sample varied depending on the kit, resulting in 198 mIU/ml for the MAIA kit, 172mIU/ml for the IRMA kit, and 143 mIU/ml for the MEIA kit. Considering the IOC inter-lab distribution of results(55-312 mIU/ml) using 27 different kits and the mean value (178$\pm$56 mIU/ml), all three kits are within the range of －15.8% - ＋5.6% of the mean value, which proves them useful for the hCG assay. The MEIA kit resulted in lower hCG values because it detects only intact hCG molecules, in contrast to the other two kits which detect intact hCG and -hCG together. However, it is suitable for screening purposes because of its advantage of being an automated system. When 123 urine samples of athletes were analyzed in 22 batches using this system, the variation of control values fell within $\pm$ 10% of the mean values, and an specimens tested negative with hCG values less than the detection limit of 2 mIU/ml.
