Don Catlin Believes NFL Bumetanide Positives Result of Tainted Supplements

Millard BakerOct 31, 2008

Anti-doping expert Don Catlin believes the numerous NFL players who tested positive for the diuretic butemanide may have unknowingly used dietary supplements tainted with the drug. (”Alleged use of old-school drug surprises experts,” Oct. 29).

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“I’d love to know,” said Don Catlin, a renowned expert who ran America’s first anti-doping lab. “But that’s why the first thing I thought was, ‘They take supplements all the time. Every athlete does. Maybe it’s a bad batch of supplements.’”
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We reported previously of Catlin’s bewilderment at the intentional use of butemanide by NFL players as a masking agent for anabolic steroids. There were several plausible indicators that a contaminated supplement could have been the culprit. Experts are indeed baffled by the presence of an old and dangerous drug in anti-doping samples.

After our report this weekend, more evidence points to dietary supplements contaminated with butemanide, specifically the StarCaps by Balanced Health Products that we cited, which were found to contain near therapeutic levels of bumetanide in case reports published several months ago.

NFL New Orleans Saints players Deuce McAllister, Will Smith, and Charles Grant are attributing their positive doping results to the use of StarCaps.

New Orleans Saints Guard Jamar Nesbit is suing the manufacturer of StarCaps (Balanced Health Products) for $235,294 lost wages during his four-week suspension for testing positive for bumetanide. He apparently still has a bottle of StarCaps, which, when tested, were found to contain bumetanide as an undisclosed ingredient.

Balanced Health Products has recently suspended all shipments of StarCaps as a result of the attention from the NFL bumetanide scandal.

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“We don’t know for sure what the situation is,” said Marc Ullman, a lawyer for Balanced Health Products, the company the markets StarCaps. “If there is in fact any adulteration, we don’t know if it’s an issue with the raw materials or if it’s something to do with the manufacturing of the product.”
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I guess the big question is why StarCaps did not suspend shipments and reforumlate their product LAST YEAR when the Journal of Analytical Toxicology discovered therapeutic levels of bumetanide in StarCaps.

Several experts are suggesting that the spiking of StarCaps with bumetanide was intentional.

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Lori Bestervelt, the senior vice president of NSF, said there is virtually no chance a supplement could be accidentally tainted with Bumetanide.
“It could happen, but then again we could all be struck by lightning three times, too,” Bestervelt said. “But we do test for it. We’ve never had any supplement come up positive.”
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So, it appears to be a case of systematic spiking of a supplement with undisclosed ingredient(s) by a supplement manufacturer OR systematic use of a drug to mask anabolic steroids by football players.

I guess it is possible that Deuce McAllister was sitting around in the offseason reading the Journal of Analytic Toxicology and figured out he could use bumetanide to mask steroid use and if he got caught, he could just blame StarCaps?

I tend to think the (un)intentionally contaminated-supplement theory is more likely.

But then again, why in the world would professional athletes be caught using Nikki Haskell’s StarCaps?

Post from: Steroid Report

Written by: Millard Baker | Twitter | FriendFeed | Facebook | E-mail

Don Catlin Believes NFL Bumetanide Positives Result of Tainted Supplements

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