Can a single line on a medication list change the entire course of a life? Before recent days, only pharmacology experts could name the name meldonium without stammering or getting the order of the letters wrong. Today, this substance intended to treat angina and heart disease, better known in Eastern Europe under the name of mildronate, can boast of having brought down a striking colony of big names in world sport.
Latest: Maria Sharapova (our photo). The 28-year-old Russian tennis player herself announced, Monday March 7 in Los Angeles, that she had tested positive for meldonium during the last Australian Open, in January in Melbourne. She explained in a quiet voice that she had been taking this medication for around ten years, “to treat recurring health problems, magnesium deficiency, cardiac arrhythmia and cases of diabetes in my family”. She said she used it on “prescription” from her family doctor.
Credible? Yes and no. Certainly, meldonium was not on the list of products banned by WADA before January 1, 2016. Maria Sharapova was therefore not legally at fault in swallowing it at a regular rate, until her control at the last Open from Australia. But the case of the Russian player is added to such a list of athletes caught red-handed since the start of the year that the matter becomes disturbing. The Swede of Ethiopian origin Abeba Aregawi, 1500m world champion in 2013, the Russian skater Ekaterina Bobrova, the Ukrainian biathletes Olga Abramova and Artem Tychchenko, the Russian cyclist Eduard Vorganov, the Ethiopian marathoner Endeshaw Negesse, plus six Georgian wrestlers, all tested positive for the same substance.
Classified in the family of “hormonal and metabolic modulators”, meldonium was added by WADA to the list of prohibited products “due to data indicating its use by athletes to improve their performance”. A dopant, a real one, without any doubt, at least in the eyes of the World Anti-Doping Agency. According to Pierre-Jean Vazel, French athletics coach, WADA realized that this product was frequently used by athletes thanks to tests carried out in 2015 by the Institute of Biochemistry and the Center for Preventive Research on Cologne doping. Meldonium was present “in 2,2% of 8 urine samples randomly collected during anti-doping controls among professional athletes,” he wrote on his blog, hosted by the daily site. Le Monde.
Pierre-Jean Vazel explains: “Strength sports were over-represented (67%), ahead of endurance sports (25%). The German university had noted two publications in the scientific literature showing positive effects on the performance of athletes, through an increase in endurance, recovery, protection against stress and an improvement in the activation of functions of the nervous system. central"
Maria Sharapova explained Monday that she had been prescribed the drug since 2006 to “treat several health problems. » The player explained that she had been “often sick. I had the flu, irregular EKGs, and signs of diabetes, knowing there was a history of diabetes in the family. » The only problem, but a major one: the first study on the effects of meldonium in cases of diabetes only dates back to 2009, three years after Maria Sharapova discovered its miracles for her fragile health.
Clarification: meldonium is not available for sale in Europe and the United States. It is mainly sold in Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia and in the Baltic countries. According to Craig Reedie, the president of the AMA, it would even be almost over-the-counter. Disturbing fact: Maria Sharapova has resided in the United States for many years. She would therefore have brought the medicine from her native Russia.
