EPREX

Eprex contains Epotin Alpha, in other words EPO. This is a drug designed to rapidly stimulate the production of red blood cells.

This drug was developed primarily to treat people with poorly functioning kidneys, and stop them from becoming anaemic, because it is the kidneys that produce natural occurring EPO.

All forms of EPO or other drugs that have the same effect are banned in all forms of sport and athletic competition, including all forms of horse and greyhound racing.

This drug and other forms of it have been long abused by cheating athletes to boost the number of red blood cells, as it is the red blood cells that provide oxygen to the muscle tissue and internal organs.

Increased oxygen equals increased stamina and in most instances speed.

There is a trade off with such drugs being used by healthy individuals, simply because increased red blood cells means thicker blood that is harder to pump by the heart, and does not efficiently penetrate the smaller blood vessels of the body.

Some years ago this drug and others was commonly abused by some professional cycling teams where it caused the death of several cyclists.

In regard to greyhounds this drug can be particularly dangerous to use because compared to humans, horses, and other breeds of dogs, greyhounds already have extremely thick blood. Therefore the only time a drug such as this would provide any advantage to a greyhound is if that greyhound suffered severe anaemia, and an extremely low blood count. If this drug was used on a greyhound suffering from dehydration, severe heart damage would be the most likely outcome.

Is this particular form of EPO able to be found by the current drug testing methods used by greyhound racing? With urine testing I honestly could not be sure to say either way, however with testing of a blood sample it is easy to detect if a form of EPO has been used due to the characteristic changes in the red blood cels and cell count between immature and mature blood cells. However drug swabbing methods are continually being improved upon, and anyone found guilty of using this drug on their greyhounds is likely to face a lifetime ban in Australia.

Cheers,
Tom