Over the past few months, the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit (HIWU)–HISA's enforcement arm–has made several announcements that have peeled the curtain back on just how difficult the second part of that equation will be to accomplish.

Internal reviews of the six HIWU-contracted laboratories uncovered different limits of detection in blood for diabetes drug Metformin and for benzoylecgonine (BZE), a metabolite of cocaine. In the case of Metformin, all the positives originated from just the one lab.

After dropping several cases against trainers for Metformin and BZE positives, HIWU explained that it had subsequently harmonized its “testing sensitivity” in blood across the six labs for these two substances, and that it would repeat the harmonization process for other drugs, including banned substances of which there are listed well over a thousand.

“There are an awful lot of substances out there that we need to sort through, and we won't sort through them until they're actually identified by a laboratory,” said HIWU chief of science, Mary Scollay, at a recent HISA town hall. “But we are committed to harmonizing across laboratories in fairness to stakeholders.”

Scollay then added this coda: “It's important to realize that the lack of harmonization across laboratories has existed for decades.”

For those who have watched drug testing evolve in the sport over the years, Scollay's words hardly came as a shot from the dark. One of the key drivers of federal regulation of horse racing was to eliminate the crap-shoot nature of drug testing under a state-by-state system.

But under HISA, why haven't these differences been ironed out?

The answer involves a bracing plunge into the opaque waters of drug testing, where clear answers can be as easy to retrieve as Excalibur from its stone, and where arcane terminology is used interchangeably depending upon the person talking.

But it turns out that a variety of issues–from different testing equipment to different testing methodologies to different sets of staff interpreting the results–have all played a part in leading the sport to where it finds itself now.

HIWU has “testing specifications” for more than 300 “core” analytes–most of them controlled medications but some banned substances–to which all HIWU-contracted laboratories are required to test.

“Beyond those analytes, HIWU has asked each laboratory to utilize the broadest scope of analysis available to them,” wrote Scollay, in response to a list of questions.

Outside of those 300 or so core analytes, therefore, testing variability from facility to facility means the six HIWU-contracted labs are screening for different numbers of substances, and have varying abilities to screen for the same substances, according to drug testing experts. In other words, the same sample sent to two different laboratories could result in two different sets of results.

Furthermore, as HIWU–which was built by Drug Free Sports International–continues to work through a laborious “lab harmonization” process, what are the implications for the horsemen and women facing potentially life-changing sanctions for banned substance violations? And how can stakeholders be assured that newly established harmonized limits adequately factor in the risk of inadvertent contamination, especially those banned substances ubiquitously used by humans?

“It would be one thing if this was just a fine and a ten-days [ban],” said Cynthia Cole, former director of the University of Florida's (UF) laboratory. No contractual agreement was reached between the UF lab and HISA. In different equine anti-doping cases, Cole has both provided testimony for HIWU, and prepared opinions for trainers defending themselves.

“But these bans, these are career ending for people,” Cole added. “I just feel really strongly that the bar should be very high, and that there should be no doubt that there was a violation.”

History

“Incredulity and disbelief ran neck and neck, but outrage outstripped them both at Santa Anita Saturday as horsemen reacted angrily to the latest drug scandal to rock thoroughbred racing.”

The above paragraph, which reads as though plucked from a story from recent years, instead originates from a 1989 LA Times article, when a spate of cocaine positives had entangled several trainers, including leading lights like Wayne Lukas and Laz Barrera.

The reason given for the sudden rash of cocaine positives? That Truesdail Laboratories, the drug testing laboratory used at the time by the California Horse Racing Board (CHRB), had started to use more sophisticated equipment to analyze the samples.

According to one official at the time, the “improvements in testing” had suddenly increased the sensitivity of the equipment “10-fold.”

In other words, new state-of-the-art instruments were detecting substances in blood and urine at previously unachievable levels. Some said at the time the levels were so small as to be inconsequential–a refrain that has turned into a steady drumbeat in the intervening years.

“The increased sensitivity in drug testing has resulted in a number of things being called positives that never would have been called before,” said Eric Hamelback, chief executive officer of the National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association, speaking at the 2019 National HBPA Convention.

The same drumbeat has reverberated around other equine sports, as well.

Nearly 20 years ago, one Irish veterinarian who had administered a “mild sedative” to the high-level show jumper, Landliebe, one-month prior to a failed drug test subsequently issued a public statement evoking “amazement” that traces of the drug could still be found in a horse's system after that time.

On a practical front, drug testing has evolved in an attempt to keep up with an ever more sophisticated array of performance enhancing drugs and doping methods. In human sports at least, regulators don't appear to be winning that war, for there remains quite a lag-time between new drugs coming onto the scene and reliable ways to test for them.

But advances in testing sensitivity has also had the effect of widening the gap between possibility and practice from one lab to the next. For it turns out there exists a complicated set of issues that weigh into testing variability between facilities.

The instruments used to analyze samples, the way tests are prepared for sampling, the types of tests run, the substances being tested for, staffing expertise, ongoing research into the detection of emerging substances and a slew of other issues all play a part.

Just Why Are Labs Different?

In pre-HISA days, individual state commissions contracted their drug testing programs out to individual laboratories. And though most states followed the Association of Racing Commissioners International's (ARCI) model rules, it still left a lot of contractual wriggle room around things like the scope and type of testing performed, what specific matrices–blood or urine, for example–were being tested, and so on.

At the end of the day, however, the relative accuracy and breadth of each drug testing program can–like so many things in life–be distilled down to money. Funding for the drug testing program, for one. And funding to keep the laboratories at the cutting edge of science.

“In a lot of cases, the determining factor in those contracts was price, with the low bidder winning the work,” said Richard Sams, an expert in racing chemistry and toxicology. Sams is also a former lab director currently advising several defendants in cases against HIWU.

“Low-bidding often meant limited testing, and oftentimes, not very high quality testing,” Sams added.

Take Joe Gorajec's term as executive director of the Indiana Horse Racing Commission. Back in 2015, he organized for blood samples taken from harness and Quarter horses to be sent to the California-based Truesdail Laboratory–the Commission's official lab at the time-and to two audit laboratories: LGC in Kentucky, and Industrial Laboratories in Colorado.

Gorajec's actions led to the Indiana racing commission severing ties with Truesdail after it failed to detect in three samples high levels of commonly used corticosteroids that the other two laboratories detected.

Under HISA, of course, the regulatory dynamic in drug testing has changed. But horse racing has swapped out a patchwork quilt of different rules for a patchwork quilt of different labs.

Though a single entity now contracts out a set of testing requirements to six different laboratories, the fact that no two labs are created equal remains a thorn in the side of testing uniformity. And experts single out two primary reasons why.

One concerns the instruments used to analyze the samples. In a recent presentation at the Global Symposium on Racing in Arizona, Scollay compared the situation to the use of different ovens from kitchen to kitchen.

This is where the specter of poor funding continues to loom large. “Some of the laboratories have brand new instruments–state of the art,” said Cole. “Other laboratories, not so much.”

Historically well-funded laboratories like UC Davis's “Maddy Lab” in California and the University of Kentucky's Equine Analytical Chemistry Laboratory have “a lot of new equipment and a lot of very well-trained chemists and technicians,” said Cole.

When it comes to HIWU-contracted laboratories like the Ohio Department of Agriculture's Analytical Toxicology Laboratory, and the Animal Forensic Toxicology Laboratory at the University of Illinois-Chicago, “these are smaller laboratories with generally older equipment,” Cole said.

“Over the years, they've adapted to what they've been asked to do, and they've developed their own methods of testing and confirmation methods, and they're not the same,” said Cole.

To get a gauge on just how crucial funding can be, a top-of-range liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry system can retail around the $750k mark. And these machines can have a shelf-life of only around a decade, give or take a few years, due to ongoing technological advances.

The other key area concerns drug testing extraction methods. This is the process by which the substance or analyte is removed from the blood or urine to be examined under an instrument like a mass spectrometer.

There are all sorts of different extraction processes for different analytes, and each of these processes can be “substantially different” depending on the lab, Sams said.

“The fraction of the drug that's present in the sample that gets removed by the process can vary considerably from one lab to the next,” said Sams.

Horse racing is far from the only sport confronting these sorts of problems. Just take this 2022 paper, in which three Norwegian researchers focus on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)'s approach to drug testing in human athletics.

“Some laboratories are capable of detecting lower concentrations of prohibited substances than other laboratories, simply because the laboratories may use different equipment and/or test methods,” the researchers write.

HIWU'S Approach

If lab variability has been a decades-long problem ensnaring all professional sports, not just horse racing, why has it become a lightning rod under HISA?

One of HISA's most compelling selling points has been the advent of a level playing field comprising the same drug testing rules and a stable of accredited laboratories “testing for the same banned and controlled medicines at the same level,” as HISA CEO, Lisa Lazarus, put it in September of this year.

But for the reasons already identified, the goal of a completely fair drug testing playing field for all participants–no matter their location in the country and no matter where a sample is sent-is a major challenge when dealing with multiple laboratories.

The more labs needing to be unified in their capabilities, equipment and approaches, the more complex and expensive the problem.

For U.S. horse racing, the crux of this issue primarily surrounds HISA's lengthy list of banned substances–those substances, in other words, beyond the more than 300 core analytes that HIWU's six labs can test for reliably.

Banned substances are not supposed to be detected in a horse's system at any point, racing or training. As such, violations for these substances come with the heaviest penalties under HISA, including a potential two-year ban for the trainer. No trifling matter, therefore.

Unlike most controlled substances under HISA–those with set thresholds and screening limits–banned substances under HISA are being tested to limits of detection, which is the lowest concentration of a substance that can be identified by a laboratory. And different labs can have different limits of detection for the same substances. That's if they're testing for them at all.

As Cole puts it, “I think the really difficult issue has come up with the banned substances, which is where they basically have said, 'if it's there at all, it should be called.' That's been a problem because you can have a laboratory that's very, very good at finding [a banned substance], and then another lab where their ability to detect [a banned substance] isn't as good.”

When asked about this aspect of the drug testing program, Lazarus wrote in emailed answers to questions that “it is important to remember that all samples at any given racetrack go to the same Laboratory,” so lab variability is not a problem within the same “races and meets.”

It's unclear just how many banned substances for which HIWU has set harmonized limits of detection. Nor will the specific limits be made public, once established.

“HISA/HIWU cannot comment on the number of Banned Substances that have a harmonized Limit of Detection,” wrote Scollay. “Since Banned Substances should never be in a horse, laboratory testing specifications for them are not published.”

Another key question is this: Exactly how many substances is each lab routinely screening for?

According to one state regulator–who asked to remain anonymous–the most proficient HIWU-contracted laboratories are screening for around double the number of substances as some other HIWU-contracted labs.

Scollay didn't deny the claim, but explained how beyond the more than the 300 “core” analytes, “HIWU cannot speak to the overall capabilities of each lab.” She added, however, that a key part of the harmonization process is the “collaboration and sharing of information” between labs.

Human Drugs

Which leads to the issue of those banned substances which are commonly found in everyday life, like legitimately prescribed human drugs.

What process is the agency using to ensure that the harmonized limits of detection weigh the possibility of intentional misuse of a banned drug in a racehorse against the threat of inadvertent contamination?

In her written responses, Scollay explained that the agency uses any or all of the following criteria to set “relevant, effective, and achievable” harmonized limits of detection in banned drugs:

Dr. Mary Scollay | The Jockey Club

1–A survey of the laboratories to determine their current capabilities to detect the substance.

2–Conducting a review of the science surrounding the substance to determine illicit use in human and equine sports, or its effects in other mammalian species.

3–Assessing the threat level of the substance. “I.e., the potential for that substance to be present in the horse's environment beyond the control of the trainer,” Scollay wrote.

Scollay wrote that HISA and HIWU also consult the international community on testing specifications, “and consider their controls on Banned Substances and Controlled Medications that are not regulated by Screening Limits or Thresholds.”

A feature of the new regulatory environment is the potential for trainers to be provisionally suspended for banned drug positives while they await a hearing.

In Jonathon Wong's case, for example, the trainer has been provisionally suspended for at least 170 days for a June 1 Metformin positive.

What happens if one of the six HIWU-contracted labs detects a new banned substance without a harmonized limit of detection? How will the cases be handled while the harmonization process takes place?

“The actions taken will depend on the specific circumstances of the case with an emphasis on fairness to all racing participants,” wrote Scollay.

International Community

International regulators like the British Horseracing Authority avoid the issue of lab variability by using only using one primary facility to test their samples in their jurisdiction.

But how do other international jurisdictions handle substances with no established international threshold, residue or screening limits?

In Europe, at least, the answer sounds familiar.

The European Horserace Scientific Liaison Committee (EHSLC) considers some substances to be prohibited-at-all-times, as is the case with anabolic steroids and other anabolic agents. For these substances, European laboratories generally work to the lowest concentrations their confirmatory analysis procedures allow.

But the EHSLC also maintains an evolving list of substances that have “target sensitivities”–in other words, agreed-upon screening concentrations similar in effect to HIWU's “harmonized limits of detection,” said Clive Pearce, an internationally renowned animal sports medication and doping control expert.

To generate this list, the EHSLC's veterinarians, analytical chemists, pharmacologists, and racing administrators work together to select substances whose presence in a racehorse's blood or urine sample would be of particular concern.

What are these concerns? That such substances are, for example, unlicensed veterinary products, routinely used human medicines, or environmental and plant-based contaminants, Pearce explained.

The “sensitivities” agreed upon for each substance reflect the concentrations considered to have the potential to affect a racehorse's performance or to compromise its welfare.

More broadly, for all substances subject to the EHSLC's process for achieving drug screening harmonization, the most important consideration is that all its laboratories are able to routinely deliver the same level of detection, said Pearce.

According to Pearce, the list of substances with “target sensitivities”–drug substances and their major metabolites in both blood plasma and urine–total about 150.

At the symposium in Arizona, Scollay explained that there are now new “open lines of communication” between HIWU and the EHSLC.

Why can't the EHSLC simply share all relevant information on substances with “target sensitivities” with HIWU, therefore? It turns out it's not that simple.

“The international community's research and laboratory testing specifications are confidential,” Scollay wrote. “International jurisdictions limit their information dissemination due to potentially compromising their own anti-doping and medication control programs.”

Other experts consulted for this story were more specific. They explained that the litigious nature of U.S. horse racing can make international jurisdictions wary of sharing with their American counterparts sensitive information that might be publicly divulged during a case.

If all boats can't be lifted by readily shared information across international borders, how else then to make the program here better, quicker?

Solutions

Gorajec is all in on federal oversight of racing. He played an instrumental part in getting HISA passed in Washington. But he said he has his reservations about the current drug testing program.

“This shouldn't be an issue at this juncture,” said Gorajec, highlighting the documented problems associated with uniformly detecting BZE, the cocaine metabolite long on regulators' radars. “They had a couple, three years to get their arms around this. Cocaine has been around for decades.”

HIWU-contracted labs must be accredited with an international standards organization and with the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium (RMTC), the latter of which handles an external quality assurance program, which includes single- and double-blind testing of the six labs.

HIWU officials are also putting together another accreditation program to “build on the foundations” of the international and RMTC accreditation systems as the agency “moves testing laboratories towards harmonization of methodologies and sensitivities across the spectrum of Prohibited Substances.”

What would help, Gorajec said, would be to significantly raise accreditation standards to whittle down the number of HIWU-contracted labs to just the most proficient. “That should have already been done,” he said.

When asked about Gorajec's comments, Lazarus wrote that HIWU will evaluate the contracted laboratories on a regular basis, “and if a Laboratory does not meet HIWU's performance criteria, it will not be continued in the program.”

Cole suggested for HIWU to establish an oversight committee-possibly populated by a chemist, a veterinary pharmacologist and an industry figure-to review new or unusual findings and make recommendations as to whether they should be pursued.

“They are trying to fix the plane while it is in the air,” said Cole, about the work HIWU officials are doing to fix the problem of lab variability. “But they are trying.”

According to Ed Martin, president of the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI)–another key industry figure not shy of voicing his concerns and frustrations with the federal law–HIWU should convene a long meeting between the various lab directors with the sole purpose of reaching an agreement as to what the “point of regulatory action” is on a list of some of the more commonly called substances.

“It would seem to me, the best way to insulate themselves from legal challenges would be to get that done sooner rather than later,” Martin added.

In response to Martin's suggestion, Scollay wrote that HIWU conducts weekly meetings with the directors of its contracted laboratories.

“There have been multiple discussions regarding strategies to achieve harmonization,” she wrote. “All the directors are committed to this goal, but all parties recognize that time is needed to reach it. In short, meetings are already happening on a weekly basis.”

When asked about her overall thoughts as to the harmonization process, Lazarus wrote that she was “absolutely thrilled” at the progress made in the time given.

“The discrepancies amongst states under the prior system were significant, so to be where we are at such an early stage is a major benefit to the industry,” wrote Lazarus. “I am also proud of the transparency and adjustments HIWU has made when a non-harmonized analyte is identified. These adjustments have all been to the benefit of horsemen. Prior to HISA, this level of transparency did not exist at the Laboratory level.”

As racing continues to grapple with the practical and legal conundrums posed by lab variability, stakeholders can seek cold comfort from the fact they are not alone.

The Norwegian researchers critical of WADA's drug testing program zero in on the testing of “so-called non-threshold substances” for accusations of subjectivity.  “These tests lack objective and quantifiable decision limits that undisputedly resolve whether test results should be interpreted as positive or negative,” they write.

The lack of “clearly defined criteria for doping tests,” the researchers added, “carries a great risk of punishing innocent athletes and undermines the fight against doping in international sports.”

Sound familiar?

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Even when investigators found in his office a tube of Thyro-L, which is used with horses for the correction of conditions associated with low-circulating thyroid hormone, Poole wasn't that alarmed. He was given a prescription for the medication in September to use on a horse that was subsequently transferred to another trainer a month later. He says he had not used the drug on any horse since. At the time, it was perfectly legal to use the drug if a prescription had been obtained and in the states Poole raced in, Florida and Ohio, it was not illegal to possess the medication.

Then everything changed on May 22 when the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit (HIWU) took over, handling the drug testing at most U.S. racetracks and levying the penalties for those who were found to have violated HIWU rules. Under the new Anti-Doping and Medication Control (ADMC) rules, the mere possession of Thyro-L was a serious violation as the drug had been designated a banned substance. Suspensions for banned substances carry suspensions of up to two years.

Jeff Poole was in a lot of trouble.

“I was totally unaware I had (Thyro-L),” he said. “I would have thrown it away. I wasn't even using it and they don't accuse me of using it. All they've accused me of is having it. It is not a performance-enhancing drug. This is a joke.”

Poole got the prescription for use on a horse named King Andres on Sept. 27, 2022 while the horse was training at Thistledown. After that race, he was transferred to the barn of trainer Randy Faulkner. The Thyro-L prescription was written by Dr. Scott Shell. In what may be nothing more than a coincidence, Shell was provisionally suspended by HIWU for being in possession of banned substances, none of which were Thyro-L.

From Thistledown, Poole shipped to Tampa Bay Downs and then to Gulfstream. He said that on each occasion his employees packed up everything that wasn't nailed down in his tack room and office, which included the tube of Thyro-L. While it should have been thrown away, it was simply forgotten and thrown in with the rest of Poole's belongings.

One thing Poole cannot do and has not tried to do is claim ignorance. He admits that on March 15, 2023, while at Tampa Bay Downs, he sat in on a presentation from HIWU Chief of Science Dr. Mary Scollay in which Scollay warned trainers that new rules were about to go into effect and that they needed to get rid of medications that were about to fall into the banned substance category. Thyro-L was specifically mentioned.

“I'm hitting myself over the head,” Poole said. “This is so stupid. I could have gotten rid of the stuff. I just didn't think about it. Too much else on my mind.”

Poole decided to fight, which led to having a hearing before an arbitrator that took place on July 26. That gave him plenty of time to think, beginning with why someone would have inspected his barn in the first place.

“They said someone tipped them off that it was in my office,” Poole said. “As far as I'm concerned, they must have sent a stool pigeon into my place. I never would have let anybody in my office who wasn't a friend. And if a friend saw it and knew what was going on, they would have said 'Jeff, get rid of that stuff. You're not allowed to have it anymore.'”

He's also followed other HIWU cases and claims a pattern is emerging whereby it seems that the majority of those who have been suspended are small-time trainers with limited resources. (Ironically, in his ruling, arbitrator Jeffrey Benz referred to Poole as a “high-level trainer of thoroughbred racehorses.”)

“(HISA CEO) Lisa Lazarus talks about how they're not trying to get rid of the little people but it looks to me like that's exactly what they're trying to do,” Poole said. “They gave me 22 months and I never had a bad drug test on a horse ever. They don't care about destroying a man's life when it's totally unnecessary. Horses are my life.”

Lazarus has had to respond to accusations that HISA is targeting small stables many times. When asked to comment on Poole's accusations she said “The ADMC program is completely unbiased” and referred to a letter to the editor she wrote to the TDN that addressed that issue.

During the first weeks of his suspension, Poole did nothing. He remained convinced that his side of the story would hit home with whomever was to decide his fate and that he would be exonerated. He was, of course, wrong.

“I thought this would all be straightened out,” he said. “I never dreamt they'd do this to me. I sat for months with no income. It got to the point where I couldn't keep doing it. I couldn't make a red cent. There was nothing but money going out.”

Once the arbitrator ruled against him, upheld the 22-month suspension plus a $10,000 fine and ordered Poole to pay $8,000 in arbitration costs, he knew he had to do something. While most trainers who have been provisionally suspended by HIWU have sat on the sidelines, Poole moved his stable to Mountaineer Park. HISA does not have jurisdiction over West Virginia racing. The same goes for Louisiana. So Poole is free to race in both states.

“West Virginia is not my home,” he said. “This is not where I want to be. My home is in Tampa, Florida. Every year I look forward to going home. After Mountaineer closes, my only option is to try to get stalls in Louisiana at the Fair Grounds. That's not a place I ever wanted to go to in my life, but it's either that or welcome to Walmart.”

Poole realizes he made mistakes. He was told by Scollay that Thyro-L was going to become a banned substance and that he needed to get rid of it if he had any in his barn. He ignored her warning. He also understands the trainer responsibility rule. No matter what he might think about the rules regarding Thyro-L, he was in possession of a banned substance and under the trainer responsibility rule he had set himself up for a penalty.

But what he can't understand is why he was suspended 22 months and fined $18,000 for what he considers to be a very minor offense.

“I expected to probably be fined for not discarding it,” he said. “But 22 months? If they think that's fair, that's beyond me. Officials, trainers, owners, everybody is telling me how unfair it was what they did to me. But I didn't see it coming. I don't think I deserve anything more than a possible fine.”

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In this role, which she commences Oct. 10, Scollay will oversee HIWU's Science Department, including the HISA Equine Analytical Laboratory accreditation program, and education efforts ahead of the ADMC Program launch in January 2023. She will also prioritize research development into Prohibited Substances while engaging with veterinary scientists, pharmacologists, and other experts in the Thoroughbred industry. Additionally, Scollay and her team will manage a Prohibited Substances database that will be available for industry stakeholders to use as a reference tool.

Scollay joins HIWU after serving as the Racing Medication & Testing Consortium's (RMTC) executive director and chief operating officer for three years. While with the RMTC, she directed the advancement of world-class laboratory drug testing standards, promotion of RMTC-recommended rules and penalties for prohibited substances and therapeutic medications, monitoring of emerging threats to the integrity of racing and the health and welfare of racehorses, and administrative oversight of RMTC-funded research projects and educational programs.

Before leading the RMTC, Scollay spent more than 30 years as a racing regulatory veterinarian, including 11 years as the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission's equine medical director.

“Dr. Scollay's extensive experience in the areas of anti-doping rules, testing standards, and veterinary regulation in the Thoroughbred industry will make her a key asset to HIWU,” said Ben Mosier, executive director of HIWU. “We are fortunate to retain her knowledge and skillset as we prepare for the implementation of the ADMC Program on January 1, 2023.”

Named to HISA's ADMC Standing Committee in May 2021, Scollay has resigned from that responsibility to take on her position with HIWU.
“HISA represents the way forward for Thoroughbred racing, the only way forward,” said Scollay. “I am grateful for the opportunity to continue serving the sport during this transition, and I am committed to working with HIWU to deliver a best-in-class equine anti-doping program to the industry.”

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Metabolomics is an emerging field in doping control and represents a novel testing approach that identifies cellular effects unique to a class of drugs rather than identifying the specific molecule responsible for those effects.

“The RMTC is proud to support the professional development of young scientists who are the future of our drug testing and research programs,” said Alex Waldrop, RMTC Board Chair. “It is particularly rewarding to be able to fund Dr. Keen as she will be under the supervision and tutelage of Dr. Mary Robinson whose own post-doctoral training program was funded by the RMTC over 10 years ago.”

“The recruitment and retention of motivated, highly trained personnel and support of competitive research programs are critical to anti-doping, medication control, and racing safety programs,” said Dr. Mary Scollay, Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer. “The racing industry has a responsibility to solicit qualified individuals, support their advanced training, provide incentives for relevant research programs, and foster productivity in research laboratories.”

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Racing Medication and Testing Consortium (RMTC) has announced their support of post-doctoral training by funding a Fellowship Program beginning in 2022.

The need for establishing such a program is two-fold:

• To promote a sustained research program with a core focus on anti-doping, to include topics related to drug testing, development of new analytical methods with application to racing chemistry, pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics, forensic toxicology, or other related disciplines. The future of horseracing's anti-doping programs requires mentoring young scientists to become researchers, racing laboratory directors, and industry leaders. Innovation and application of newer, more sophisticated technological advancements will come from those young scientists.

• To establish a mechanism to identify, recruit, and retain young scientists and encourage their research pursuits relevant to horse racing's need for a rigorous anti-doping program and the promotion of enhanced safety for racehorses.

“The recruitment and retention of motivated, highly trained personnel and support competitive research programs are critical to anti-doping, medication control, and racing safety programs, said Dr. Mary Scollay, Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer. “The racing industry has a responsibility to solicit qualified individuals, support their advanced training, provide incentives for relevant research programs, and foster productivity in research laboratories.”

Relevant fields of study have historically included veterinary pharmacology, veterinary or human toxicology, and analytical chemistry. More recently other disciplines, including genetics, biophysics, and immunology have become relevant to anti-doping. Scientists trained in these disciplines are encouraged to apply for the Fellowships.

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With 18 hours of lectures and labs, in addition to interactive and hands-on sessions, the theme will be 'Infectious Disease and Movement of Horses.'

Internationally recognized experts including Peter Timoney FRCVS, PhD (University of Kentucky); David Horohov, PhD (University of Kentucky); Maureen Long, DVM, PhD, DACVIM (University of Florida); and Laurie Beard, DVM, DACVIM (Kansas State University) will be featured. The conference provides training directly related to the duties and responsibilities of the racing regulatory veterinarian in protecting the health and welfare of racehorses and supporting the integrity of competition.

“To have become established as an international source of quality education for these specialist veterinarians in such a short period of time validates the work of so many in assembling these events,” said RMTC Executive Director Dr. Mary Scollay. “We are grateful to all our stakeholder sponsors who invest in our regulatory veterinarians–and the safety and integrity of our sport–by supporting this program.”

Visit RMTCnet.com for more information.

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The Zoom webinar meeting will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 28 at Noon eastern.

Participants include MRC Executive Director Mike Hopkins; MRC member Dr. Thomas Bowman, who chairs the commission's Equine Safety, Health and Welfare Advisory Committee; Dr. Dionne Benson, Chief Veterinary Officer for 1/ST RACING (The Stronach Group); Dr. Mary Scollay, Executive Director of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium and Alan Foreman, Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association general counsel and Chief Executive Officer of the THA.

The MRC, upon the recommendation of the advisory committee chaired by Bowman, approved a motion to modify a regulation on the five corticosteroids to eliminate testing threshold levels and employ limit of detection—the lowest level at which a laboratory can, with confidence, detect a substance in a sample.

The change will be filed with emergency status and there will be a public comment period. It is anticipated the updated regulation will be implemented Nov. 1, Hopkins said.

The five corticosteroids are dexamethasone, prednisolone, betamethasone, isoflupredone and triamcinolone. The current 14-day stand-down period for intra-articular injections will remain in place under 2019 model rules approved by the Association of Racing Commissioners International and RMTC.

The advisory committee discussed the proposal at a Sept. 8 meeting as a result of several dexamethasone positives and reports the corticosteroid was being regularly administered by some veterinarians at 48 hours before a race at a lower dose rather than the RMTC-recommended 72-hour withdrawal time at the regular dose.

The webinar is open to all Maryland horsemen and practicing veterinarians. Advance registration is required to join by clicking here.

The post Community Meeting To Discuss Maryland’s Stricter Corticosteroid Regulation Set For Sept. 28 appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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In her time at the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium, Dr. Mary Scollay said she had acquired bottles of these and other products from the two sites that later became part of the focus of FBI investigators. Rigorous testing had yielded mostly inactive ingredients, sugars, or harmless amino acids. Still, she had always wondered whether the makers of the substances were including some new, sinister form of performance enhancer that simply evaded even top-shelf testing.

Now, we know more about the instructions given to staff mixing up products at the direction of former pharmacist Scott Mangini, who had business involvement with both websites at various times. (Mangini was one of more than two dozen people indicted in March 2020 on drug adulteration and misbranding charges stemming from an alleged series of illegal doping rings in Thoroughbred and Standardbred racing.)

One of the final items filed by prosecutors just before Mangini's sentencing on Sept. 10 included a cache of documents seized in FBI searches related to the investigation of RacehorseMeds and HorsePreRace. Included in the public filing was a series of formulas for some of the products sold by RacehorseMeds, as well as a series of invoices for orders of product ingredients sent from a supplier based in Wuhan, China. (There was also a set of billing records for RacehorseMeds, but that was filed under seal so is inaccessible to media or the public.)

We asked Scollay and former HFL Sport Science laboratory director Dr. Rick Sams to take a look at those records and help us understand what they mean about the products sold on these sites.

Harmless, or not?

Many of the substances listed on these (and other, similar websites) were clearly intended to appear as cheaper, knock-off versions of prescription drugs already in FDA-approved mass manufacture. Usually, those shared the same names as the prescription products (clenbuterol, omeprazole, flunixin, etc.) but were offered to lay people with no requirement they be licensed veterinarians. Those substances had their own problems, but it was at least clear what was supposed to be in them.

The mysterious substances with proprietary names had been more intriguing for regulators. Formulas revealed that many of them contained nothing different from more innocuously-named oral supplements – vitamins like pyridoxine (B6) and thiamine (B1), minerals like iron and copper salts, and amino acids like L-tryptophan. Many of these things can be found naturally in feed or hay, and Scollay says there's no evidence that feeding extra of many of those ingredients produces any appreciable effect in a horse's health, let alone performance. A product named  Horse Power turns out to contain ATP, vitamins, amino acids, and di-isopropylamine dihydrochloride. It's true that they would not test, but it wouldn't be because they were magically hidden by masking agents; rather, they aren't usually tested for post-race because those substances are probably present in most horses being fed balanced diets.

Under the cloak of “proprietary formulas,” the websites managed to charge much more for those pedestrian ingredients than what they would have cost horsemen who knew what they were buying. Red Explosion Blood Builder, for example, is still listed for sale online for $35 for a 10-milliliter bottle, but according to its formulation it only contained .002 grams of B12, water, and a couple of stabilizers. The B12, according to shipping records, was purchased for $8 per gram. A mark-up is just good business of course, but injectable B12 is available from legitimate, FDA-approved mass manufacturers for less than $6 for a 100-milliliter bottle.

Besides being expensive, some of the products may not have actually been capable of being absorbed by horses' bodies, according to the formulas in the court filing. A product called TQ Explosion contained calcium levulinate, thiamine, tryptophan, and GABA.

“Calcium levulinate is a source of calcium,” said Sams. “Thiamine is a vitamin. Tryptophan is an essential amino acid. GABA is gamma aminobutyric acid and is prohibited. This product is made up in sterile water for injection instead of 0.9% sodium chloride so it may not be isotonic.”

The inclusion of salts is usually made in injectable formulas to ensure the solution is appropriately passed through the bloodstream. Blood cells are isotonic, meaning they naturally contain some salts. Pure water is naturally drawn in by salty solution, so exposure to pure water could make red blood cells swell and burst – that's why most IVs are run with saline and not sterile water. Leaving out any kind of salt probably didn't make the product risky to the horse, according to Sams, but it does mean it probably didn't get delivered throughout the body in any sort of useful way.

Sometimes, the proprietary formulas left our expert sources scratching their heads as to what the makers thought they were accomplishing. The frighteningly-named Allergy Explosion turns out to contain only formic acid.

“Formic acid is the substance that causes the stinging sensation in ant bites,” said Sams. “I don't think that injecting it in a horse is inhumane, but may lead the trainer to believe that it is doing something to excite the horse.”

Another product called Ozone contained nothing but food grade hydrogen peroxide in water. The “food grade” designation is unsettling to laboratory experts because it means the ingredient has not been created with sufficient purity to be safe for use in medication, let alone an injectable formula.

“Although hydrogen peroxide injections of people have been reported, it is not an approved therapy,” said Sams. “I wondered about the source of the hydrogen peroxide and its strength and purity as well as its stability in the injection vial and whether the peroxide interacted with the vial septum. All of these need to be addressed and answered before the product can be assumed to be safe for administration to horses. Mangini's company did not report conducting any of these studies.”

A few of the proprietary products may have kicked up a few interesting results on Google had their ingredient lists been made available at the time of purchase, but were probably still bunk.

“As I recall, the Purple Pain was to be administered intravenously, so while there is evidence that ammonium sulfate will interrupt nerve conduction—when injected adjacent to a nerve—there's nothing to suggest that systemic administration would have any effect on pain,” said Scollay. “There is some speculative stuff about L-isoleucine and d-phenylalanine [both found in a formula called Adrenal Cortex] exerting analgesic effects, most of the credible sites said there was no legitimate evidence for that claim.”

Just because it seems like a lot of this stuff didn't work didn't mean it was a harmless waste of money for the trainers who may have been buying it. While it's not uncommon for legitimate pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies to import ingredients from China and elsewhere, there are varying standards to which those products can be held. Shipping receipts seized from Mangini showed that many of the ingredients he purchased were lacking a USP designation after their names. USP stands for United States Pharmacopeia, which is an organization that sets quality, purity, strength, and identity standards for raw ingredients. Imported ingredients with this designation have been verified to meet USP standards.

Several products were listed on shipping receipts as being less than 100% in purity – a no-no for reputable compounders to put in injectable products.

“The 98% pure claims make my skin crawl.  That other 2% can be a killer—literally,” said Scollay.

Not only were many ingredients lacking this seal of approval, Scollay and Sams point out there were a few which contained dyes or colorings to make them appear an appealing color that would match the marketing name given to them. Blast Off Yellow contained yellow food coloring which, of course, isn't intended to be injected into the veins of an animal. It remains unknown what, if any, side effects this could have.

There also isn't a lot of detail provided in the instruction sheets on filtration, which would be a key step in making an injectable formula, though it's possible there were additional instructions on filtration provided in documentation not attached to prosecutors' exhibits. We do know that sanitary conditions in Mangini's facility were lacking – state health inspectors discovered his pharmacy had no working sink for people to wash their hands before compounding drugs and the areas where drugs were made were filthy. They also found that there were no quality assurance tests taking place to check for sterility or endotoxin contamination of products like this one.

Read more about Mangini's pharmacy in this 2016 report.

Then there were the instructions to make ITTP, which is supposed to be expensive to produce, even for much more technically advanced laboratories than Scott Mangini's. Scollay couldn't decide whether the instructions for making that product were more “hilarious or horrifying.”

“Take a bottle of water under the hood, open it,” read the single page of instructions. “Pour 100 ml into one beaker, 100 ml into another. Put 10 g of calcium ball things in one beaker, put 37.5 ittp in the other. Ph the ittp to 7.5. Pour them back into the bottle that has remained under the hood. Shake, it's great. No filter. Yay we are done.”

“I'll say 'c'—all of the above,” said Scollay when considering how she viewed those instructions. “In case there would be any question about the credibility of the laboratory, or how seriously it undertook its tasks—this certainly doesn't read like the business model of a good guy just trying to make good medicine more affordable.  Unless the good guys were the writers at the National Lampoon.”

The heavy hitters

There were substances in the shipping receipts that gave Sams pause. There were some that were intended to be knockoffs of legitimate drugs, and others that were more sinister.

“The products containing dexamethasone, omeprazole, clenbuterol, flunixin, phenylbutazone, and toltrazuril are all generic knockoffs of prescription products,” Sams said. “The FDA requires generic products to be manufactured in FDA-approved facilities according to Good Manufacturing Practices standards. Mangini's operation could not have met these standards. Furthermore, the preparation of knockoff products in bulk as he was doing does not meet the definition of “compounding”.

“The remaining products contain clearly prohibited and performance-enhancing substances such as selective androgen receptor modulating drugs (SARMs) and others. I include injectable clenbuterol in this group because it is not an approved drug in the U.S. Although all of these substances are prohibited in horse racing, they are not DEA controlled substances so no DEA violations occurred.”

Given the manufacturing conditions in Mangini's lab, Sams said veterinarians and trainers could not have relied on the labeled concentrations to be accurate enough to comply with testing thresholds established by state commissions – because those thresholds were created based on the FDA approved versions of the drugs.

The SARMs that attracted the most attention from prosecutors went into a product called Ostarine MK-2866 Oral Solution. Its label promised “Ostarine MK-2866 is in the class of Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators or SARMs. SARMs offer the benefits of traditional anabolic adrogenic steroids such as testosterone, including increased muscle mass, fat loss, and bone density.”

The label also indicated the drug had a 24-hour half life, which would give a user information about how to evade testing.
“Ostarine is extensively metabolized so administration studies had to be performed in order to identify metabolites to facilitate its detection in blood and urine because orally administered ostarine is subject to substantial first-pass effects,” said Sams. “This is a drug of ongoing concern in racing and, in my opinion, is one of the more egregious violations in the Mangini document.”

Other invoices include “Cardanine,” which appears to be a misspelled version of cardarine and Antibolicum LGD4033, which is also a type of SARMs drug. They also reveal the shipment of ITPP, a prohibited substance believed to increase the oxygen-carrying ability of red blood cells. Di-isopropyl diacetate, or pangamic acid, is also among the orders and is also a prohibited substance.

Scollay thought it notable that several products – both knockoffs and proprietary formulas seemed to be reliant on the inclusion of a common thyroid drug.

“Interesting that the Light Explosion and Green Speed contain levothyroxine as their primary ingredient—just in case anyone didn't think it was being used to impact performance,” she said.

L-thyroxine is sold under various trade names, including Thyro-L and Levo-Powder, and was the subject of much concern several years ago, when California regulators discovered that trainer Bob Baffert was giving the substance to all his horses as a feed additive, whether or not they'd been diagnosed with thyroid problems. It remained a topic of concern due to its association with cobalt administration.

Read previous reporting about l-thyroxine here.

Mangini's response

To the extent Mangini responded to some of these issues in court, he maintained that the majority of his sales came from knockoffs of existing drugs like omeprazole (which he was warned by the FDA to stop mass manufacturing). Ostarine, he said, accounted for .5% of his overall sales. Blood Building Explosion, which contained cobalt, was .4% of sales, while Horse Power was .65% of sales.

At sentencing, prosecutors pointed out that the only reference they have to verify Mangini's account of his sales are the records he kept.

“This is not a company that has produced anything remotely like a wholesome breakdown of its finances,” remarked U.S. Attorney Andrew Adams.

Regardless of Mangini's assertion that he didn't actually sell many of the problematic products on offer, Adams pointed out that each bottle of Blood Building Explosion contained many doses, so even the sale of dozens of bottles really resulted in hundreds of doses going into horses pre-race.

For his part, Mangini and his attorney said the former pharmacist was mostly “hurt” by the suggestion that his products were intended to corrupt the industry he loved so much.

“It was wrong to have this internet site and run the pharmacy the way he ran it,” said Mangini's attorney, William Harrington. “He's pled guilty to that. But to suggest that what he's really been doing was to create dozens of products to abuse animals, I just don't support that.”

The post At Long Last, We Know (Kind Of) What Was In Those Products Sold By The Indicted Pharmacist appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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We examined the process briefly last year when racing fans grew restless awaiting the split sample results from the 2020 Arkansas Derby card, but wanted to address a few of the questions that were specific to this case.

We spoke with Dr. Mary Scollay, executive director of the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium (RMTC) and former equine medical director for the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, to learn more about how this regulatory process normally works. (Current staff at the commission are prohibited from discussing an ongoing case, particularly one like this where the split sample has not yet been tested.)

What's a split sample and how is it collected?

The split sample, or “B” sample, is collected at the same time as the primary sample, in the test barn after the race. Urine or blood is collected from the horse and subsequently divided into two containers. One of these is sent off for analysis by the laboratory contracted by the commission – in this case, Industrial Labs – for post-race testing. The other is stored under lock and key at the track at which it was collected.

If a lab finds and confirms a drug positive or overage in the primary sample, the trainer is notified and provided the opportunity to request to have the split tested. The trainer is allowed to select which lab will test the sample, and in many places is required to select a lab with a certain level of accreditation, like RMTC accreditation. All RMTC-accredited labs are capable of performing split sample testing.

How often are split samples negative, and what happens if they are?

If a split sample is negative, or if the split sample laboratory finds the substance in question at a level below the regulatory threshold, then there is no violation of the rules and therefore no ruling issued.

Scollay said that in her experience at the Kentucky commission, it was extremely rare for a split to come back negative.

“Maybe over 11 years, maybe there were four [cases where a split lab found a lower, legal level of a substance in question],” she said. “I can only think of one split in all those years where a laboratory reported a finding and the split laboratory did not detect it. And in that particular case it was a fairly obscure substance.”

Do split sample labs know whose sample they're testing?

They aren't supposed to. In normal circumstances, the lab would receive the sample from the appropriate jurisdiction and would be told which substance had been found, and in what concentration. They would not be told the identity of the horse, trainer, or race. All testing samples are assigned numbers at the time of sampling to keep them anonymous to the primary and split sample testing labs.

Scollay said the publicity around this split sample could lead to a reluctance from some laboratories to take the sample on – but she has also heard from at least one lab director who isn't convinced that would be a factor.

How is a split sample test different from the original test?

A split sample test would be the same as the confirmatory analysis run by the primary testing lab. When the primary testing lab gets a post-race sample, it will first screen the sample against its catalogue of substances to see if any of them are present. When it does identify one, it then must perform confirmatory analysis to decide how much of the drug is present in the sample.

The split sample lab will not screen the split against its catalogue, but will instead perform confirmatory analysis similar to what the primary lab did. The split sample lab is provided with the concentration from the original test only to help technicians choose the proper calibrators for an accurate reading.

“The estimated concentration, the reason that's provided is so they know what calibrators – known positive concentrations – they need to run in order to make an accurate determination about the concentration about the sample,” she said. “If you know the concentration is five, your calibrators might be one, two, five, seven, and ten. But if you don't know the concentration, your calibrators might be one, 10, 25, 50, and 100. Then you're not able to get a very accurate estimate of the concentration.

“You're trying to sandwich your unknown or your test sample in the middle of the range of known concentrations. Think of it of if you have eight or ten glasses of water and you put blue food coloring in one and keep diluting across glasses until it gets lighter and lighter. You've got a glass with blue in it and you're going to line that up to try and see which one of those tinted blues is closest to your color.”

It's not unusual for there to be as much as a 25 percent variability between labs when you get down to very small measures like picograms. For substances that have thresholds governing how much of a drug is considered legal, that can make a big difference. (In this case, however, there is no threshold for betamethasone so any amount would be considered a violation.)

Once the lab actually begins the analysis, it takes the same amount of time as the initial post-race testing – but the hold-up is usually scheduling. Dr. Scott Stanley told us last year that it's not unusual to wait three to four weeks in the non-busy season to get a split result back. Given the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic on staffing levels, he expected the Charlatan split sample in 2020 to take six to eight weeks; in the end, stewards in Arkansas issued a ruling on July 15 for races run the first week in May.   

How is the split sample lab chosen, and how long does that take?

The process of choosing a lab depends on a few factors. Labs can reject a split sample request for various reasons. As we explained last year, contract work (like post-race and TCO2 testing) are the main priority for testing labs, because that's what pays their bills. Spring and summer are the busiest times for testing laboratories, as there is racing going on in more places than there is in the wintertime. 

Scollay said in her role at the Kentucky commission, it wasn't uncommon for labs to tell her it might take weeks before they would be able to promise a result – or even months.

“When I worked for the horse racing commission, it was my goal to make sure a trainer always had a choice and sometimes that meant two laboratories,” she said. “Laboratories would respond, 'We're way behind' or 'We've got a bunch of confirmatory analyses lined up' or 'Our turnaround time would need to be 12 weeks.'

“I can't remember the last time I got a positive response from all the RMTC-accredited labs. I don't know that I ever did.”

If there's any kind of back-up for the lab's regular work – new equipment, staffing issues, etc. – that has a ripple effect on regular testing and hence, split sample timeframes.

It can also matter what substance is involved; if the primary lab found an unusual drug, or an uncommon drug at a particularly small concentration and the lab getting the split sample request already knows it can't reliably test for that substance to the same limit, it will reject the split sample request. Scollay said that in this case, that shouldn't be an issue because betamethasone is a controlled therapeutic drug which testing labs would encounter frequently. She expects all RMTC-accredited labs to have the same sensitivity of testing when looking for this particular substance.

Why can't we eliminate delays by having trainers choose split sample labs and send samples off before the first round of tests come back?

For one thing, it would be incredibly expensive for either commissions or horsemen to pay for double testing to be done on every sample. For another, split samples aren't obligatory – a trainer can decide to waive his or her right to the test and take the penalty if they feel it's not worthwhile to fight the positive.

Most importantly though, Scollay said the differences in testing capabilities for rare substances, and the variation in timelines for each lab through the year would make it meaningless to choose a lab before knowing what substance might be at play.

“It would be foolish for a commission to consent to that, because if the lab can't do the work and the sample gets sent to them, a positive test gets negated and that certainly doesn't support the integrity of the game,” she said.

So when will Baffert be banned?

Hang on a minute. The Kentucky regulations are very clear about the penalties stewards may hand to a trainer for medication violations. While they're given a range of potential suspension lengths and fines to work within, they don't have the latitude to throw those out the window and revoke a trainer's license. Under current regulations, betamethasone is a Class C medication in Kentucky, and Medina Spirit would be Baffert's second Class C in 365 days if the split is positive. (Merneith's overage for dextrorphan and the two lidocaine overages from last year fall in different drug classes by Kentucky standards. So, although this is Baffert's fifth therapeutic overage in a year, it's only his second of this type.) The penalty range for a second Class C violation in 365 days is a 10- to 30-day suspension and a $1,500 to $2,500 fine.

Scollay said there is a catch-all rule in Kentucky, as there is in many places, designed to deal with conduct “contrary to the best interests of racing,” but that's typically reserved for more extreme situations, not therapeutic overages.

What about the disqualification of the horse?

The same Kentucky regulation, KAR Title 810, Chapter 8, Section 030, states that a first Class C offense for an owner “shall” result in disqualification and loss of purse. Unlike trainer penalties, there is no language included allowing for stewards to consider mitigating circumstances. Medina Spirit owner Amr Zedan has engaged an attorney who's already preparing to argue that the stewards aren't bound to disqualify a horse.

The post Your Questions About Split Sample Testing (And More), Answered appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Read more about SGF-1000 in this Paulick Report feature.

Since both dexamethasone and betamethasone are corticosteroids, some readers wondered whether a positive test for betamethasone could actually be a guise for something more sinister.

According to Dr. Mary Scollay, executive director for the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium, the answer is no.

Scollay explained that the testing and confirmation process used in mass spectronomy makes it virtually impossible for one drug to be misidentified as another. She doesn't believe betamethasone is a false positive result, nor that SGF-1000 could actually have shown up as dexamethasone in post-race tests. (No one ever said the indicted individuals were always accurate in their intercepted conversations.)

Mass spectronomy works by identifying foreign molecules inside blood or urine and weighing them as part of a process called screening analysis. Those molecular weights are then checked against the lab's drug catalogue. The catalogue contains the molecular weights of known substances and is developed through rigorous testing of known drugs. If a molecular weight matches something in the catalogue, that's an initial finding.

Before the lab can actually call the test a positive for the substance though, it goes through a second process called confirmatory analysis. It's possible two substances could have the same weight but be made up of different components, so the lab must find out if their compositions are the same. In this process, the molecules of the substance are bombarded with energy until they split apart, and the ratios of the resulting pieces are measured against the catalogued substance.

“Each specific molecule has its own way of fragmenting,” said Scollay. “It's like a Hershey bar – it's scored in a certain way, it's going to break the same way every time if you apply force at certain points. When you go to identify the molecule, you look at the candidate ions, the ions that result from fragmenting it, and also the ratio of those ions to each other. They should be present in very specific proportions. If they're not, or if the candidate ions are not present, or even one of them is missing, you have not identified the substance.

“I would argue that if you identify the candidate ions in the right ratio, you've identified betamethasone.”

By the time a lab calls a positive using this testing method, it's justifiably confident that the substance at play has been correctly identified.

So what of the SGF-1000/dex connection?

“Maybe dexamethasone was in the SGF-1000, and that's why they said it would show as dexamethasone, but if a molecule has the same exact molecular weight as dexamethasone and you apply energy to it and it fragments, and the fragmented parts are the ions you would get from dexamethasone in the relative concentrations, I'm going to say you've identified dexamethasone,” she said.

The post About That Connection Between SGF-1000 And Dexamethasone appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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