Some athletes illicitly use certain kinds of insulin (long-acting and rapid-acting forms of insulin) in order to enhance their performance, even if the mechanism of such a process is still to this date uncertain.

Insulin doping is of course illegal and therefore for control purposes, there must a rapid accurate detection method. The setback however in developing this is that insulin's degradation products were deemed impossible to detect.

Now, German scientists have reported development of a urine test that finally can identify insulin doping in athletes.

Using urine samples from volunteers, including athletes with diabetes, the scientists were able to identify degradation products from lantus insulin, one commonly used form of insulin. The test could not identify surreptitious use of two other forms of long-duration insulin, but the study uncovered clues that toward that goal.

Study results will appear in an article scheduled for the April 1 edition of ACS' Analytical Chemistry.

Read the full report.