Relation between Exercise Performance and Blood Storage Condition and Storage Time in Autologous Blood Doping

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Autologous blood doping (ABD) refers to sampling, storage, and re-infusion of one’s own blood to improve circulating red blood cell (RBC) mass and thus the oxygen transport and finally the performance capacity. This illegal technique employed by some athletes is still difficult to detect. Hence knowledge of the main effects of ABD is needed to develop valid detection methods. Performance enhancement related to ABD seems to be well documented in the literature, but applied study designs might affect the outcome that was analyzed herein. The majority of recent studies investigated the effect of cold blood storage at 4 °C, and only few studies focused on cryopreservation, although it might be suspected that cryopreservation is above all applied in sport. The storage duration—the time between blood sampling and re-infusion—varied in the reported literature. In most studies, storage duration might be too short to fully restore the RBC mass. It is thus concluded that most reported studies did not display common practice and that the reported performance outcome might be affected by these two variables. Thus, knowledge of the real effects of ABD, as applied in sport, on performance and associated parameters are needed to develop reliable detection techniques. ABSTRACT: Professional athletes are expected to continuously improve their performance, and some might also use illegal methods—e.g., autologous blood doping (ABD)—to achieve improvements. This article applies a systematic literature review to investigate differences in the ABD methods and the related performance and blood parameters owing to different storage conditions—cryopreservation (CP) and cold storage (CS)—and different storage durations. The literature research resulted in 34 original articles. The majority of currently published studies employed CS during ABD. This contrasts to the applied storage technique in professional sports, which was mainly reported to be CP. The second outcome of the literature research revealed large differences in the storage durations applied, which were in the range of one day to 17 weeks between blood sampling and re-infusion, which might affect recovery of the red blood cell mass and thus performance outcome related to ABD. Data revealed that performance parameters were positively affected by ABD when a minimal storage duration of four weeks was adhered. This article identified a need for further research that reflect common ABD practice and its real effects on performance parameters, but also on related blood parameters in order to develop valid and reliable ABD detection methods.