Waterloo chemists revolutionize drug testing in sport, new drug-testing method for banned substances will give results faster at major events like the Olympics

By Katharine Tuerke, Faculty of Science

A new testing protocol developed by chemists at the University of Waterloo will revolutionize current drug testing methods at major sporting events like the Olympics.

A team of chemists from the Faculty of Science has developed a fully automated method for analyzing urine. The research, funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) , appears in a recent issue of Analytica Chimica Acta.

“The challenge was to develop a robust method that could quantify hundreds of chemically different compounds,” said Ezel Boyaci, post-doctoral fellow and one of three lead authors of the study. “This automated method minimizes human error and speeds up processing time all in one test.”

WADA is faced with policing a growing list of banned substances in thousands of samples that need to be processed quickly. Officials at the Sochi Winter Olympics are expected to perform nearly 2,500 tests in 17 days, with a further 1,200 tests after the games.

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