Total Fibrin and Fibrinogen Degradation Products in Urine: A Possible Probe to Detect Illicit Users of the Physical-Performance Enhancer Erythropoietin?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Erythropoietin (Epo) represents for some athletes the ultimate tool to gain an edge over their peer competitors. Underground information indicates that its usage is spreading at an epidemic pace since no analytical technique is yet available to detect its utilization. We hereby report observations obtained from analysis of urine specimens collected from top-level athletes after international-calibre competitions. Possible Epo misuse was evaluated by the measurement of urine total degradation products (TDPs), excretory fragments attributed by Sakakibara et al. to the fibrinolytic action of Epo. Markedly elevated urine TDP levels were measured in more than 13% of the 76 top-level athletes evaluated in this study. Analyses of urine specimens from a control hockey player group and from out-of-competition resting subjects indicate that the urine TDP content is not significantly influenced by exercise per se. Solid confirmation of TDP measurement as a sound probe to detect illicit Epo users should come from controlled studies with concomitant administration of Epo.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".