According to a research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the currently followed doping tests for testosterone need to be scrapped with immediate effect as they ignore the fact that ethnical difference do exists in hormonal activities.

Testosterone and many other hormones that propel the levels of testosterone such as growth hormone are among some of the most abused performance enhancing drugs in sports. However, doping tests may show a different result due to ethnical reasons.

From News-Medical.Net:

They included 57 men of Black African origin; 32 of Asian origin; 32 of Hispanic origin; and 50 of white (Caucasian) origin in their research. All the men were aged between 18 and 36.

The results revealed the genetic variation in almost one in four (22%) of the African footballers; in eight out 10 (81%) of the Asian players; one in 10 of the white men, and in 7% of the Hispanic players.

Based on these findings, the Swiss researchers “recalibrated” the thresholds for each ethnic group.

The new T:E ratios were: 5.6 for men of African origin; 5.7 for white men, and 5.8 for men of Hispanic origin. For men of Asian origin, the ratio was 3.8.

A single indiscriminate threshold to pick up steroid abuse in international sport is “not fit for purpose,” the authors conclude. Instead, the reference ranges should be tailored to an athlete’s individual endocrinological (hormonal) passport, they suggest.

“[Such a] passport may detect modifications induced by abuse of testosterone and its precursors, but also alterations in the steroid profile caused by indirect androgen doping products,” they conclude.

The researchers involved in this study after conducting tests in relation with steroid profiles of football players belonging to different ethnicities after steroids were deliberately added to their urine samples to observe if there were any differences and found out that ethnical differences do play a major part.