Salanson dead

"warren" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...

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In article

<[email hidden]>,

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Tom Kunich said:

Warren, EPO is a naturally occurring hormone that all but a few

very

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rare and short lived people have in their bodies. The body has a

very

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high tolerance for this stuff for several reasons. But the

important

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thing is that it has been used in megadoses for very ill cancer patients and athletes have been
using it in very high doses as

well.

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There are certain families that are missing a gene that controls

the

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body's production of EPO and so we know that there is a very high tolerance to the stuff.

They may be choosing the lesser of two evils. Wouldn't you?

There are some medications that are indeed the lesser of two evils. Happily, EPO isn't one of them.

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There can be no allergic effect to hEPO or else you'd already have died.

So the injected form of EPO behaves exactly the same as the EPO

already

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in you?

Yes. That's what the rhEPO means - (recombinant human EPO) it IS human EPO down almost to the last
molecule. There is a slight difference but nothing that is easy to detect. There are some
medications which are absolutely nothing like the one's they mimic such as the various steroids
which act as artificial testosterone, but EPO is EPO.

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Who said death was the effect we're concerned about? What about Stuart's comments about the effect
on your body's ability to

maintain

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iron balance.

I've noted several times on this board that there can be some serious side effects from using EPO
for prolonged periods of time. The most important of them that I might suggest would be an overload
of iron on your kidney's causing kidney failure. This is caused by EPO forcing red blood cells to
generate too rapidly. These immature red blood cells die quite rapidly and they have to be scavanged
out of the blood by your kidneys. The hemoglobin contains iron. Another side effect of this is that
the iron stored in your bone marrow is pulled out which could possibly leave your body low on iron.
Taking doses of iron almost always ends up with you taking too much which then puts a further load
on your kidneys. Vicious circle and not something that people ought to be doing I think.

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Perhaps there are other effects just like when someone circumvents their body's regulation of
testosterone or dozens of

other

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chemicals. You're familiar with the "side effects" of some drugs on

our

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physiology. Why was Pantani's natural EPO regulation so screwed up during his hospital visit? How
is it now? Like many things in the pharmacology of sports the people who know the answers aren't

writing

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about it.

There is always the chance of some complex interaction with other hormones but not likely. I have no
doubt that extended use of EPO will cause the bodies own production to shut down and then there will
be a period of readjustment after you stop taking the stuff. But I would doubt that it would be
permanent.

In fact, athletes of young age die all the time from "natural" causes that are genetic in origin and
that is what this appears to be.

We all agree that any drugs used in athletics to increase performance are by definition bad. EPO
happens not to have substantial health risks even though it does have a very high ethical risk.

In article <[email hidden]>, Tom Kunich

Quoted message said:

"warren" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

So the injected form of EPO behaves exactly the same as the EPO

already

Quoted message said:

in you?

Yes. That's what the rhEPO means - (recombinant human EPO) it IS human EPO down almost to the last
molecule. There is a slight difference but nothing that is easy to detect. There are some
medications which are absolutely nothing like the one's they mimic such as the various steroids
which act as artificial testosterone, but EPO is EPO.

Quoted message said:

Who said death was the effect we're concerned about? What about Stuart's comments about the
effect on your body's ability to

maintain

Quoted message said:

iron balance.

I've noted several times on this board that there can be some serious side effects from using EPO
for prolonged periods of time. The most important of them that I might suggest would be an
overload of iron on your kidney's causing kidney failure. This is caused by EPO forcing red blood
cells to generate too rapidly. These immature red blood cells die quite rapidly and they have to
be scavanged out of the blood by your kidneys. The hemoglobin contains iron. Another side effect
of this is that the iron stored in your bone marrow is pulled out which could possibly leave your
body low on iron. Taking doses of iron almost always ends up with you taking too much which then
puts a further load on your kidneys. Vicious circle and not something that people ought to be
doing I think.

Thanks for the further info. Nick's comment that EPO was harmless didn't sound right to me and the
insight from you and Stewart about the body's reaction to it supports my hunch.

-WG

warren said:

Thanks for the further info. Nick's comment that EPO was harmless didn't sound right to me and the
insight from you and Stewart about the body's reaction to it supports my hunch.

As always, it's best to rely on the scientific evidence rather than Tom's insight. He mistakenly
ascribes a major role of the spleen (filtering out red blood cells) to the kidneys. Who knows what
else is wrong.

However, I do agree that the long term medical problems that may arise from EPO use are likely the
result of disrupted iron homeostasis, rather than a direct reaction to the EPO peptide itself.

"Tom Kunich" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

There can be no allergic effect to hEPO or else you'd already have died. Therefore the only way to
kill yourself with EPO is to use so much of it that your blood thickens up like syrup and your
heart, being enlarged and with a deep slow stroke from athletic training, slows to the speed at
which it stalls. This generally occurs in sleep or sometimes when you are doing something like
meditating.

Not quite true, chronic use of epo has been known to be immunogenic. Also, epo is not epo...there
are alternative post-translational modifications that affect the kinetics of receptor interactions
and the half-life in the blood stream...some natural, some engineered. Here's some stuff about
immunogenicity:

Rev Clin Exp Hematol. 2002;Suppl 1:7-11. Related Articles, Links Immunogenicity of erythropoietin
and other growth factors. Indiveri F, Murdaca G.

Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Internal Medicine and Clinical Immunology, University
of Genoa, Italy.

Erythropoietin (EPO) is a 165 amino-acid sequence glycoprotein which plays an important role in
maintaining regular generation of erythrocytes, Jacobs et al. describe the cloning of the human EPO
and recombinant EPO has been introduced for the treatment of anemia in patients with renal diseases.
The extensive utilization of EPO can induce the production of neutralizing EPO antibodies, which
have been proved in patients with the non-infectious form of pure red cell aplasia (NI-PRCA), an
autoimmune disease characterized by a sudden inhibition of erythrocyte maturation and production. In
this review, the literature concerning the molecular structure and the genetic profile of EPO as
well as the relationship between neutralizing EPO antibodies and NI-PRCA have been analyzed.

And:

Cyclosporine treatment for patients with CRF who developed pure red blood cell aplasia following EPO
therapy. Chng WJ, Tan LK, Liu TC. Department of Haematology/Oncology, National University Hospital,
Singapore 119074. [email hidden]

Human recombinant erythropoietin is the main treatment for anemia in renal patients. Recently, there
have been case reports of pure red blood cell aplasia (PRCA) developing in renal patients
administered erythropoietin, probably because of neutralizing antibodies detected in all these
patients. All reports were from the West, and most patients were treated with erythropoietin-alpha.
Cyclosporine is an immunosuppressive agent used to treat a spectrum of autoimmune conditions. We
report a series of Chinese renal patients who developed PRCA after treatment with
erythropoietin-alpha, suggesting that this is a problem worldwide. They were treated successfully
with cyclosporine and became transfusion independent. Copyright 2003 by the National Kidney
Foundation, Inc.

In article said:

"Tom Kunich" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

There can be no allergic effect to hEPO or else you'd already have died. Therefore the only way
to kill yourself with EPO is to use so much of it that your blood thickens up like syrup and
your heart, being enlarged and with a deep slow stroke from athletic training, slows to the
speed at which it stalls. This generally occurs in sleep or sometimes when you are doing
something like meditating.

Not quite true, chronic use of epo has been known to be immunogenic. Also, epo is not epo...there
are alternative post-translational modifications that affect the kinetics of receptor interactions
and the half-life in the blood stream...some natural, some engineered. Here's some stuff about
immunogenicity:

Could you translate this into layman's terms please?

-WG

warren <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Could you translate this into layman's terms please?

-WG

epo is produced by sticking the gene into cells, the cells make the protein and secrete it into the
culture broth. The type of cell used makes a difference in how the epo looks, different cell types
modify the protein with chains of sugar molecules. Same protein, but different. This is how they
first detected recombinant epo, when you purify it from urine natural epo and recombinant epo behave
differently in a certain type of electric field.

The sugar molecules effect the potency of epo in a few ways. One way is that it affects how
"strongly" it interacts with the receptor. Another is that it stays in the blood longer, because old
skool epo gets filtered out by the kidneys (and into the urine) more quickly. The longer it's in the
blood, the more effective it is, the fewer injections needed. Prolonging the half life in the blood,
if you think about it, is a double edged sword for a cheater.

Anyway, there are enough cases to mention, of people developing an immune response to epo
injections. They start making antibodies to epo and stop making red cells. It could be because
"recombinant human epo" is produced in a cell line in a test tube, and not in a human, and is
therefor slightly different. We don't make antibodies to proteins encoded by our own genome unless
something goes wrong. It's called "tolerance". It's possible to break tolerance by showing our
immune system a molecule that is very similar to one of our own, but slightly different (injecting
recombinant human epo).

In article said:

warren <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Could you translate this into layman's terms please?

-WG

epo is produced by sticking the gene into cells, the cells make the protein and secrete it into
the culture broth. The type of cell used makes a difference in how the epo looks, different cell
types modify the protein with chains of sugar molecules. Same protein, but different. This is how
they first detected recombinant epo, when you purify it from urine natural epo and recombinant epo
behave differently in a certain type of electric field.

The sugar molecules effect the potency of epo in a few ways. One way is that it affects how
"strongly" it interacts with the receptor. Another is that it stays in the blood longer, because
old skool epo gets filtered out by the kidneys (and into the urine) more quickly. The longer it's
in the blood, the more effective it is, the fewer injections needed. Prolonging the half life in
the blood, if you think about it, is a double edged sword for a cheater.

Anyway, there are enough cases to mention, of people developing an immune response to epo
injections. They start making antibodies to epo and stop making red cells. It could be because
"recombinant human epo" is produced in a cell line in a test tube, and not in a human, and is
therefor slightly different. We don't make antibodies to proteins encoded by our own genome unless
something goes wrong. It's called "tolerance". It's possible to break tolerance by showing our
immune system a molecule that is very similar to one of our own, but slightly different (injecting
recombinant human epo).

Thanks very much.

-WG

Thanks for the references Dan. I think that I read about this somewhere else and I understood tha it
was related to a specific product which was an engineered EPO variant designed to stay in the blood
stream longer.

"Dan" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

"Tom Kunich" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

There can be no allergic effect to hEPO or else you'd already have died. Therefore the only way
to kill yourself with EPO is to use

so

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

much of it that your blood thickens up like syrup and your heart, being enlarged and with a
deep slow stroke from athletic training, slows to the speed at which it stalls. This generally
occurs in

sleep

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

or sometimes when you are doing something like meditating.

Not quite true, chronic use of epo has been known to be immunogenic. Also, epo is not epo...there
are alternative post-translational modifications that affect the kinetics of receptor interactions
and the half-life in the blood stream...some natural, some engineered. Here's some stuff about
immunogenicity:

Rev Clin Exp Hematol. 2002;Suppl 1:7-11. Related Articles, Links Immunogenicity of erythropoietin
and other growth factors. Indiveri F, Murdaca G.

Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Internal Medicine and Clinical Immunology, University
of Genoa, Italy.

Erythropoietin (EPO) is a 165 amino-acid sequence glycoprotein which plays an important role
in maintaining regular generation of erythrocytes, Jacobs et al. describe the cloning of the
human EPO

and

Quoted message said:

recombinant EPO has been introduced for the treatment of anemia in patients with renal
diseases. The extensive utilization of EPO can induce the production of neutralizing EPO
antibodies, which have

been

Quoted message said:

proved in patients with the non-infectious form of pure red cell aplasia (NI-PRCA), an autoimmune
disease characterized by a sudden inhibition of erythrocyte maturation and production. In this
review, the literature concerning the molecular structure and the genetic profile of EPO as well
as the relationship between neutralizing EPO antibodies and NI-PRCA have been analyzed.

And:

Cyclosporine treatment for patients with CRF who developed pure red blood cell aplasia following
EPO therapy. Chng WJ, Tan LK, Liu TC. Department of Haematology/Oncology, National University
Hospital, Singapore 119074. [email hidden]

Human recombinant erythropoietin is the main treatment for anemia in renal patients. Recently,
there have been case reports of pure red blood cell aplasia (PRCA) developing in renal patients
administered erythropoietin, probably because of neutralizing antibodies detected in all these
patients. All reports were from the West, and most patients were treated with
erythropoietin-alpha. Cyclosporine is an immunosuppressive agent used to treat a spectrum of
autoimmune conditions. We report a series of Chinese renal patients who

developed

Quoted message said:

PRCA after treatment with erythropoietin-alpha, suggesting that this is a problem worldwide. They
were treated successfully with cyclosporine and became transfusion independent. Copyright 2003 by

the

Quoted message said:

National Kidney Foundation, Inc.

Warren, note that the symptoms of this isn't a high hematocrit or heart problems but a very low
hematocrit requiring transfusions. Using more EPO would make the problem worse.

"warren" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

In article said:

warren <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Could you translate this into layman's terms please?

-WG

epo is produced by sticking the gene into cells, the cells make

the

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

protein and secrete it into the culture broth. The type of cell

used

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

makes a difference in how the epo looks, different cell types

modify

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

the protein with chains of sugar molecules. Same protein, but different. This is how they first
detected recombinant epo, when

you

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

purify it from urine natural epo and recombinant epo behave differently in a certain type of
electric field.

The sugar molecules effect the potency of epo in a few ways. One

way

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

is that it affects how "strongly" it interacts with the receptor. Another is that it stays in
the blood longer, because old skool

epo

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

gets filtered out by the kidneys (and into the urine) more

quickly.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

The longer it's in the blood, the more effective it is, the fewer injections needed. Prolonging
the half life in the blood, if you think about it, is a double edged sword for a cheater.

Anyway, there are enough cases to mention, of people developing an immune response to epo
injections. They start making antibodies

to

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

epo and stop making red cells. It could be because "recombinant

human

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

epo" is produced in a cell line in a test tube, and not in a

human,

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

and is therefor slightly different. We don't make antibodies to proteins encoded by our own
genome unless something goes wrong.

It's

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

called "tolerance". It's possible to break tolerance by showing

our

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

immune system a molecule that is very similar to one of our own,

but

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

slightly different (injecting recombinant human epo).

Thanks very much.

-WG

In article <[email hidden]>, Tom Kunich

Quoted message said:

Warren, note that the symptoms of this isn't a high hematocrit or heart problems but a very low
hematocrit requiring transfusions. Using more EPO would make the problem worse.

That's pretty much what I said my hunch was from the start. You screw around with the body's
regulation of something by taking EPO, Testosterone, etc. and you'll end up in trouble over the
long-term or at least until your mechanisms can regain your natural equilibrium.

-WG

"warren" <[email hidden]> wrote in message "]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

In article

<[email hidden]>,

Quoted message said:

Tom Kunich said:

Warren, note that the symptoms of this isn't a high hematocrit or heart problems but a very low
hematocrit requiring transfusions.

Using

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

more EPO would make the problem worse.

That's pretty much what I said my hunch was from the start. You

screw

Quoted message said:

around with the body's regulation of something by taking EPO, Testosterone, etc. and you'll end up
in trouble over the long-term

or

Quoted message said:

at least until your mechanisms can regain your natural equilibrium.

This is probably very rare and it would jump right off of the page of a coroner's report - it would
be a hematocrit of something horrible like under 20.