Expert Medical Report : Objective of the report: Secondary analyses of urine specimens collected among athletes having participated to the Vancouver and Sotchi Winter Olympic Games / Michel Burnier. - Lausanne : Lausanne University Hospital, 2017
Report prepared at the request of: Dr. Neil Robinson Project Manager - Anti-doping re-analysis and research Medical and Scientific Department International Olympic Committee (IOC)
Report published in Appendix-VIII of the IOC Schmid Commission Report
Summary of conclusions:
Professor Michel Burnier has been asked to:
1.) To determine reference values for various urinary analytes (Na, K, Cl, Ca, creatinine, urine density) coming from samples taken from top level athletes tested at the time of XXI Olympic Winter games in Vancouver.
2.) To determine for each sample collected at the time of the XXII Olympic Winter Games and analyzed for the same analytes, if the values are within the reference values obtained from the control population at the XXI Olympic Winter Games and in agreement with data published.
In the presented analyses, it has been assessed the distribution of urinary sodium, potassium, chloride and calcium concentrations in 250 samples for the XXI Olympic Winter games and calculated for each parameter: the mean ± standard deviation and upper and lower 95% confidence intervals, the median with the 5% and % percentiles. Statistical characteristics were done for women and men separately. For urinary creatinine, similar characteristics cannot be given because urinary creatinine depends on many factors including age, sex, body weight and urinary volume which are not available. Gravity was within the normal range of 1000 to 1035 in all samples.
Regarding samples of the XXII Olympic Winter Games, similar statistical analyses were performed but with the identification of potential true outliers defined as greater than the mean of Vancouver data + 3 standard deviations. With this approach, 13 samples were indentified (of 5 men and 8 women) which are definitively out of range and even out of renal physiological possibilities suggesting strongly a manipulation of the samples, for ex. an addition of sodium chloride (NaCl).
