Publication

Aachener Zeitung

Marker in the urine betrays drug sins
Cologne. A new marker system that detects drug use in e.g. car drivers or at the workplace using urine testing will be used to improve drug use detection in sports.

“Our marker system is a global innovation. We have declared it to be proof against falsification and are certain after over a decade of research and more than 40,000 analyses that this claim is correct”, says Prof. Ruprecht Keller, head of the central laboratory of Cologne’s Staedtischen Kliniken and inventor of the new and successful marker procedure. His test may revolutionise drugs checks. The respected drugs testing lab of the Deutschen Sporthochschule in Cologne and the Nationale Anti Doping Agentur Deutschland (Nada) in Bonn have shown great interest.

Finding the right marker substance was extremely difficult and laborious, Keller explained. “We use marker substances that are wholly non-poisonous and that are primarily used in drugs with which no alcohol may be consumed – such as childrens’ cough syrup.”

The marker substance is administered as a liquid by mouth. Half an hour later the urine can be tested. The marker disappears from the body shortly afterwards.

“The humiliating procedure of urinating in the presence of someone else is no longer necessary” says Keller. Swindling using someone else’s urine is impossible as the urine can be clearly traced using the marker. Even watering urine down is immediately detected.

“We reduce the error rate and thus introduce greater reliability in the anti-drug use field” says Keller. He has patented the process.

To date his separate Cologne lab run by the Ruma company has tested 150 samples a day, many from participants in methadone programmes.
“We have enquiries from Bavaria and the new east German provinces” adds press spokeswoman Monika Wetzke. “We offered our testing process to the prison service in North Rhine Westphalia and six of their eight prisons now use it”.

The test detects prisoners consuming drugs. Employers sometimes have drug tests carried out too. The Deutsche Bundesbahn, the Bundesverteidigungsministerium, some TUeV offices and Munich’s Oberlandesgericht are currently considering introducing the testing process according to Wetzke.

Keller is now trying to penetrate sports medicine as a new market. “We were very interested in entering the sports anti-drugs field” says Nada managing director Roland Augustin. “We’re very willing to consider the new process”.

To clarify whether it can be used in drugs checks “further evaluation is needed”. The Zentrum fuer Praeventive Dopingforschung der Sporthochschule Cologne, one of the two labs in Germany accredited by Nada, was positive about the new urine marker. “Manipulation could be prevented with it, which is why it’s successfully in use in drugs analysis” says the deputy lab head Hans Geyer.

“A major benefit is that there’s no humiliation involved any longer as there’s no need to supervise the urine collection”. Consideration and evaluation to date, which will be concluded in early March, indicates that this is a “very promising” process.