UFC
Concerns over hormone levels in Jon Jones' Dec. drug tests should bring further testing and scrutiny
Jan 8, 2015 - 11:15:53 AM Concerns over hormone levels in Jon Jones' Dec. drug tests should bring further testing and scrutiny

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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief

Jon Jones may have more than cocaine to worry about going forward, as in addition to the Nevada Attorney General looking into whether Jones perjured himself about his Nike deal last fall, abnormal hormone levels in Jones' December drug tests are bringing further scrutiny.

Jones was tested twice on Dec. 4 after his first sample was "watery," but both samples, along with the test on Dec. 18, brought back concerning information on his testosterone to epitestosterone ratio. Whereas we've seen past issues in T/E ratios because of high levels of testosterone, it's the low levels of testosterone and abnormally high levels of epitestosterone in comparison that are raising red flags, and bringing further questions as to why the Nevada Athletic Commission has not conducted further testing on his samples.

The "watery" sample given on Dec. 4 saw Jones register just 59ng/dl of testosterone, with an epi level of 1,700ng/dl for an extremely low ratio of .35. The second test sample saw his testosterone level rise to 180ng/dl, but the epitestosterone came back on that sample at 610/dl for a ratio of .29. On Dec. 18, the testosterone level was 490ng/dl, but the epitestosterone jumped to 2,700ng/dl for a ratio of .19.

Noted anti-doping expert and former head of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory, Don Catlin, explained this week in an interview with MMAJunkie.com that, at the very least, these tests should have triggered a carbon-isotope ratio (CIR) test to determine whether the low ratios were caused by exogenous epitestosterone use, as it's what the levels could suggest.

"That's what will give a result like that," Catlin said. "The T/E ratio is the resultant of a ratio of testosterone over epitestosterone, so if you have a large amount of testosterone in the urine, you get a high T/E ratio. If you have a lot of epitestosterone, you will get a high epitestosterone (level). You can't make a conclusion based on one value; you have to have both values. Those are pretty low values – I'd be pretty suspicious, but you can't make much of it unless you can show that it was once high and then became low."

"It's a urinary test for testosterone. You don't even need to [measure] free and total [testosterone]. Then take look at those values. They're probably going to be normal. The most important test would be to do a carbon isotope ratio test, because if he is doing something, the carbon isotope test will show it."

Now, while speculation is running rampant regarding what these levels could mean from Jones, Catlin also tempered that by stating Jones' levels absolutely could be "perfectly normal." However, with the levels raising some suspicion, he thinks the commission should have done further testing, and thinks the lack of that underlines another real issue at hand here.

"It's probably because they didn't know what they were doing," he said. "They really don't understand this thing at all. It's way beyond them."

Penick's Analysis: There are some very real concerns here, but without further testing being done we can't be sure about what the numbers mean. There's increased speculation because the numbers could be indicative of someone coming off a cycle of PEDs, it could be indicative of taking exogenous epi as a masking agent (which is why that's a banned substance); there are other potential possibilities, and as Catlin comments it could also just be his normal levels. Still, the commission should have conducted a CIR test - and if they have the samples as they should, they need to conduct those tests now - to determine if there were any exogenous substances in his system, or if that is just where his levels were at. Additionally, blood tests were conducted, which would give more accurate testosterone and epitestosterone levels than were apparent in the urine sample, and we haven't seen those results yet. So there is information we just don't have at this point that make further speculation dangerous.

[Jon Jones art by Grant Gould (c) MMATorch.com]