THE 1987 PAN AMERICAN GAMES : IOC Doctor Criticizes Pan Am Officials for Excusing Drug Users

The doctor who supervised drug testing at the 1983 Pan American Games criticized games officials here Wednesday for their decision not to seek penalties against athletes who test positive for probenecid, a drug that masks the use of banned substances.

Dr. Manfred Donike, a member of the International Olympic Committee’s medical commission, said Pan Am officials should have taken action against those athletes because, although probenecid is not specifically banned, it has “diuretic properties.” Many diuretics are among the 3,700 drugs prohibited by the IOC.

Diuretics help reduce the concentration of drugs in the system by producing more frequent excretion of urine.

Probenecid works differently but has the same result. It masks the presence of muscle-building anabolic steroids by inhibiting their excretion and increasing the excretion of uric acid, thus lessening the possibility that the anabolic steroids will be detected.

“This is a (wrong) decision,” Donike said emphatically by telephone from his office in Cologne, West Germany.

Mario Vazquez Rana of Mexico, president of the Pan American Sports Organization (PASO), had said Tuesday that “two or three” cases of probenecid use were detected last week through urinalysis but that no action will be taken because probenecid “is not yet on the prohibited list.”

Vazquez Rana said that he would not reveal the names or countries of the athletes involved. One of the athletes has been identified by another source as a member of the U.S. track and field team who did not win a medal.

Vazquez Rana said he would recommend to the IOC medical commission that the drug be added to the list of those banned.

Donike said, however, that probenecid should already be considered a prohibited substance because of a broad clause that bans diuretics and “related compounds.”

Probenecid normally is prescribed to treat patients with gout or gonorrhea.

“Frankly it is a diuretic, and it could be considered under the clause of related substances,” said Dr. Robert Voy, chief medical officer of the U.S. Olympic Committee. “But it’s not on the list of diuretics that all the athletes go by. They have no way of knowing what is meant by related substances. Until the IOC puts it on list, you can’t declare it is a banned substance.

“No question it would mask steroids. But it’s not on the list.”

Donike said he would ask the IOC medical commission to add probenecid to the list when it meets in Moscow this fall.

Donike is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on drug testing. He was brought in just before the 1983 Pan Am Games to conduct the testing in Caracas, Venezuela. That testing resulted in the first widespread drug crackdown in amateur sports. He has served as a consultant to the lab in Indianapolis and has assigned two of his technicians to help in the testing.

He said that probenecid is “as effective as any drug we’ve found at masking certain types of steroid use.”

He said he has been particularly interested in the use of probenecid since he discovered it in May in urine samples taken from five Norwegian athletes training in the United States. The athletes were tested in a sweep conducted by the Norwegian Athletic Assn.

One of the athletes, Lars Nilsen, a shotputter from Southern Methodist University, also tested positive for anabolic steroids and was banned from international competition.

Donike said that the cases of probenecid use discovered here last week are the first he has learned of since he sent out a letter to all IOC accredited drug laboratories, including the one in Indianapolis, requesting they test for the drug.

Dr. Don Catlin, director of the UCLA analytical laboratory, said recently that he also has discovered the drug in athletes’ urine samples during research.

Athletes wanting to mask the use of anabolic steroids would probably take probenecid shortly before a competition. It is most effective in the first two to four hours after ingestion, said Lynn R. Willis, a professor of pharmacology at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

“The ideal way would be to empty your bladder, take the probenecid a few hours before the competition and then empty your bladder again as quickly as you could afterward,” Willis said. “The longer you wait, the less the desired effect.”

In a related development, Reuters, an English news service, reported that Andreas Bruegger, director of the Weltklasse track and field meet in Zurich, Switzerland, said Wednesday night at a news conference that he will eliminate weight events from future meets unless he can be assured the competitors are not using drugs.

“It’s obvious athletes are taking forbidden drugs, and the IAAF (International Amateur Athletic Federation) is not exerting enough control,” he said.

Voy said that Bruegger is overreacting.

“That’s unfair to athletes,” he said. “We know for a fact that most of them are not abusing their bodies with these drugs.”

Times staff writer Randy Harvey contributed to this story.