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03/12/2020 - General information

The Catalonian Antidoping Laboratory celebrates 20 years of ISO17025 accreditation.

It is one of 30 laboratories in the world accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

The Catalonian Antidoping Laboratory first obtained the ISO17025 accreditation 20 years ago, in November 2000. The laboratory has been accredited as an anti-doping laboratory since 1985 and is one of 30 laboratories in the world accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The ISO17025 accreditation of all analytical procedures applied in doping controls was a prerequisite for maintaining doping accreditation from 2001 onwards.

ISO17025 is an internationally recognised quality standard designed to guarantee the technical competence of testing laboratories, in other words, to ensure that laboratories deliver accurate, reliable results. In Spain, ISO17025 accreditation is awarded by ENAC (Entidad Nacional de Acreditación), a Spanish Government body.

Catalonian Antidoping Laboratory. Source: IMIM.

The Anti-Doping Laboratory currently boasts a total of 72 accredited analytical procedures involving over a thousand analytes, with technologies ranging from chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry to immunological methods, including electrophoresis and double-blotting techniques.

In terms of analytes, the accreditation covers all the groups of compounds included on the Prohibited List of substances banned in sport, from low molecular weight molecules (anabolic steroids, β2-adrenergic agonists, oestrogen blockers, diuretics, stimulants, and glucocorticoids, among others) to high molecular weight substances with a peptide structure (erythropoietin, growth hormone, and so on). Each year the laboratory must renew its ISO17025 accreditation to incorporate procedures for detecting new compounds included on the Prohibited List, which is updated annually by WADA. To maintain the ISO17025 accreditation it must undergo periodic audits by ENAC, with the next one scheduled for January 2021.

In addition to anti-doping analyses, the laboratory applies its analytical arsenal to clinical samples for diagnostic purposes and research projects by the laboratory itself or in collaboration with other research groups.

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