While satisfied that it conducts drug testing at the highest possible level, the NCAA is keeping an eye on developing science that someday could improve the chances of catching more advanced cheaters.

The advanced technology -- which may include using samples other than urine -- may be needed to combat advances in the ability to mask banned substances or to substitute samples altogether. While the NCAA and those contracted to manage its drug-testing program are committed to keeping up with an ever-changing environment, officials believe the current testing methods are the best available, though changes are not inconceivable in the future if technology demands adjustment. Some of the Association's own institutions in fact are using new methods to test their student-athletes in an effort to keep them healthy and safe and to maintain the integrity of NCAA competition.

Frank Uryasz, chief executive officer and founder of The National Center for Drug Free Sport, which administers the NCAA drug-testing program, said urine -- the body fluid the NCAA uses to test for performance-enhancing drugs, street drugs and masking agents -- remains the best fluid for a number of reasons. However, he said, the center is prepared for the possibility of someday using blood for some tests, and is willing to adapt to that method if it becomes the top test. Currently, scientists are in the development stages of a blood test for the detection of HGH, the human growth hormone, which is naturally present in the human body in small amounts.

"There is some question about its validity and so the NCAA has not adopted it, nor have the professional leagues," he said. "I don't even think it's being used very much in Olympic drug testing."

Don Catlin, director of the University of Ca-
lifornia, Los Angeles, Olympic Analytical Laboratory, which analyzes all samples collected from NCAA student-athletes and also is accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency, said that scientifically, testing urine is vastly preferable to testing blood because the concentration of banned substances in urine is far stronger and lasts much longer than in blood.

"That's all the advantage you need. You need the body fluid where the drugs are in the greatest amount, and that's urine," he said. "That's the beginning and the end of it."

He said some blood testing was done at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.

Also, the "collection window" -- the period of time in which a drug can be detected in a bodily fluid -- is longer with urine than with blood.

According to Uryasz, collection also is easier and less expensive with urine than with blood, which involves puncture of the skin and requires medically qualified personnel to do the draws.

"With urine collections, although we tend to use medical people and we do train them, it certainly doesn't require the level of specialized training that doing a blood draw does," he said.

Drawing blood from student-athletes also could be problematic in that it causes some discomfort and soreness. If an athlete at a swim championship, for example, had to have blood drawn after a victory in one event and then had to swim another event, soreness in an arm could impair performance.

"I would certainly hate to have a blood draw affect an athlete's ability to compete," Uryasz said.

Blood also presents other challenges such as transportation. Blood is considered to be a biohazardous material, while urine is not, making packaging, sealing and shipping a simpler process for urine. The biohazard classification also contributes to higher costs for blood draws.

Hair testing

Other methods of testing beyond urine have some advantages, Uryasz said, though none are compelling enough to warrant a switch.

For example, blood testing would eliminate the concerns of dehydration and would reduce the ways in which a student-athlete could cheat the system. Hair testing would be easy to collect and often "holds" a drug sample longer than even urine.

"The window of detection is much longer in hair because as the hair grows the drug or the drug metabolite is trapped in the hair follicle and remains there," he said. "If you take a long sample of hair, you can often detect whether the individual used drugs 30 or 60 days ago."

However, the only drugs that are trapped in a hair follicle are "street" drugs like marijuana; there is no methodology to test for performance-enhancing drugs using hair.

At the University of Notre Dame, James Moriarity uses hair in all testing for illicit street drugs among student-athletes. Since the institution began its drug-testing program in 1979, Notre Dame had been using urine. In the late 1990s, Moriarity initiated the switch to hair for a variety of reasons, including protecting confidentiality and ease of collection. A major draw for hair-testing was its ability to trap the drugs for a longer period of time.

"We felt that a three-month usage period was more of a deterrent than just an occasional random urine test, which really is only going to be positive with recent use," Moriarity said. "The advantage of hair testing is it tends to look more at long-term use than short term. We've been very happy with the results."

At Notre Dame, officials test 40 student-athletes at random for street drugs every two weeks. The institution has about 900 student-athletes.

To complete the test, officials collect an inch and a half of hair, typically from the head. However, Moriarity said axillary or pubic hair can be used as well. Student-athletes who shave their entire bodies after being informed of an upcoming drug test are considered in violation of the Notre Dame policy, though such behavior has not been a problem, Moriarity said.

The number of positive tests at Notre Dame did not increase when the institution switched from urine to hair testing, he said. Both methods find occasional positive results, but the frequency is the same.

Notre Dame still uses urine to test for steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, though that testing is done separately and only in specific sports labeled "at risk" for the use of such substances.

Other methods not as accurate

Tests have been developed for other bodily fluids such as saliva and sweat, but both of those present unique challenges as well. The window of opportunity for testing with saliva is often quite small, and testing with sweat could violate confidentiality because of the collection method. Patches that adhere to the skin are used to collect sweat, and often are visible if a student-athlete's uniform shows a lot of skin. No methodology has been developed to test for performance-enhancing drugs in either fluid. However, both are easier to collect than urine or blood.

Uryasz said the future of hair testing in student-athletes is limited because of its inability to test for performance-enhancing drugs.

"What really drives the technology in drug testing is not what we do in sports drug testing, but what's done in workplace drug testing," he said. "Compared to the workplace (testing), the number of samples that we collect in the sports world today in the U.S. is very small."

Scientists are therefore concentrating their efforts on the detection of illicit street drugs, the goal of workplace testing.

The future of drug testing at the NCAA level seems to be solid and unchanging at this point. Catlin said he believes urine will continue to be the fluid of choice for drug testing, and he thinks that scientists will one day develop a urine test to detect the human growth hormone, too.

With the heightened awareness of drug use at the Olympic and professional levels, Catlin said he believes testing will continue to gain momentum.

"I know it's going to get more and more aggressive with the Olympic and professionals, so there will be more testing," he said.

"Most of the drugs we're interested in are better found in urine than blood."