Agilent Collaborates on Groundbreaking Study of Performance-Enhancing Spinach Extract
September 03 2019 - 08:04AM
Business Wire
Freie Universität Berlin uses company’s cutting-edge tools to
examine effects of ecdysterone
Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A)
today announced that its instruments and expertise contributed to a
groundbreaking study commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency,
or WADA.
Researchers at Freie Universität
Berlin used gas and liquid chromatography instruments, along
with high-resolution mass spectrometry systems—all from Agilent—to
study to the strength-building characteristics of ecdysterone, the
main component of spinach extracts.
The study, which included researchers in Berlin, Cologne, Rome,
and Sydney, found that the substance has a strong effect on muscle
cells—stronger, in fact, than anabolic androgenic steroids, which
are prohibited in sports. Performance in exercises increased
significantly in comparison to a control group.
Professor Maria Parr, who specializes in pharmaceutical
analytics and metabolism at Freie Universität Berlin, is among the
researchers who recommend that ecdysterone be added to WADA’s list
of substances it prohibits athletes from using. Additionally, she
and her team have developed LC/MS/MS and GC/MS methods to enable
doping-control laboratories to integrate ecdysterone into their
testing procedures.
“Most of the work in finding ecdysterone in spinach and spinach
extracts, quantitating the contents, purifying metabolites, and so
on has been done with Agilent instruments,” said Bernhard Wüst,
Agilent’s global marketing manager for sports doping.
Wüst lent his expertise in mass spectrometry and metabolite
identification to the project.
He notes that the cartoon character Popeye the Sailor (popular
in the 1960s) was right to eat spinach for strength, but that a
person would have to eat up to 4 kilograms of spinach per day for
ten weeks to consume the same amount as one of the low-dose
athletes in the study.
A short video about the study, “Popeye was right” is available
here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MvLq667_3w
Freie Universität Berlin summarized the study here: https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/presse/informationen/fup/2019/fup_19_193-studie-spinat-substanz/index.html
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Victoria Wadsworth-Hansen Agilent Technologies +1 408 553 2005
+45 2933 6980 victoria.wadsworth-hansen@agilent.com
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