MUMBAI: Gene therapies for rebuilding muscle lost to age or disease are all set to enter the clinic.
Among these are techniques that give patients a synthetic gene, which can last for years, churning out high amounts of naturally occurring muscle-building chemicals.
While gene doping promises to transform the lives of the elderly and those suffering from muscle-wasting disorders like muscular dystrophy, sports authorities worry about its abuse by unscrupulous athletes.
Unlike performance-enhancing drugs, which can be detected in the blood or urine, the new-age muscle boosters are indistinguishable from their naturally occurring counterparts.
Acting swiftly, the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) has already put gene doping on the International Olympic Committee's '04 list of prohibited substances, which includes everything from cough syrup to cocaine.
It has also asked for help from scientists to find ways to prevent gene therapy from becoming a tool for hi-tech cheating.
Some experts are not so sanguine. As gene therapy to combat disease becomes commonplace, they wonder whether gene-manipulated performance enhancement will become universally acceptable as well.
Either way, experts like H Lee Sweeney from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, argue that the Olympic games scheduled to begin on August 13 in Athens could be among the last contests run without genetically enhanced athletes.
"Call it the natural evolution of medicine," Mr Sweeney said. "It's inevitable that people will use it for athletics. It's not clear that we will be able to stop it.
People intent on subverting gene therapy will do so. The technology is too easy. It's just graduate student science," he added.
Meanwhile, scientists are also coming with evidence that challenges the primacy of matter over mind in sports. According to a new study conducted at University of Cape Town in South Africa, fatigue is in the mind, not the muscles.
But it can still have a serious impact on athletic performance. The finding could lead to treatments for conditions like chronic fatigue syndrome, or the development of illicit performance-enhancing drugs.
The convention view of fatigue paints as a result of performance-inhibiting chemicals, such as lactic acid brought on by over-worked muscles.
In recent years, however, evidence is mounting that our brains make us feel weary after exercise. It seems the brain steps in to prevent damage to mind-less muscles.
Paula Robson-Ansley and her colleagues at the University of Cape Town have demonstrated that a ubiquitous body signalling molecule called interleukin-6 plays a key role in telling the brain when to slow us down.
Blood levels of IL-6 are 60 to 100 times higher than normal following prolonged exercise, and injecting healthy people with IL-6 makes them feel tired.
Ms Robson-Ansley has a personal stake in the research because her own athletic career was cut short in part by a condition called underperformance syndrome (UPS).
She was training for the British rowing squad for the '96 Olympic games, when her obsessive schedule tipped her body over the edge. Her research could lead to new ways of treating UPS and chronic fatigue syndrome.
One way would be to block IL-6 receptors in the brain using antibodies.
This has already had some success in tackling chronic fatigue, but it raises fears that unscrupulous athletes could try the same technique to train too hard.
But, IL-6 has many effects on the body, so blocking its action could be counterproductive, or even dangerous. Moreover, IL-6 receptors may also be less sensitive in top athletes.