THE DRUG THAT BUILDS RUSSIANS

Extract from New Scientist 21st August 1980

Extract from the shrub Eleutherococcus improves the mental and physical powers of Soviet athletes, cosmonauts, and workers.

Though ignored by the West, the evidence is that it really works. One drug which Soviet athletes undoubtedly used to increase their performance at the Olympic games this year is a unique material which eludes classification or identification with any established categories of pharmaceutical substances.

Unknown

Despite its extensive use in the Soviet Union for 20 years, authorities in the West know almost nothing about it. For this reason it has not been included in the list of drugs which are banned for international sports events, nor is it in any Western pharmacopoeia. It is an extract of a thorny creeping plant known as Eleutherococcus senticosus which belongs to the family Araliaceae, the same family as the ginseng root. For this reason it is sometimes erroneously described as "Siberian ginseng". Its arrival on the race track is the culmination of many years of research involving scores of scientists, directed by the USSR Academy of Science's Institute of Biologically Active Substances located in the far eastern science centre in Vladivostok.

Pharmacopoeia

Research led to its acceptance as an official medicine by the Health Ministry in 1962 and it now lies in their pharmacopoeia, along with a range of tonic drugs derived originally from far eastern traditional medicine, including ginseng, pantocrine and schizandra. The use of Eleutherococcus in sports stems from the discovery that it could increase stamina and performance, yet had far less side effects than any known stimulant. The decisive test was carried out by Professor I.I. Brekhman, who was director at Vladivostock, and gave Eleutherococcus extract to a large group of athletes before a 10 mile race. Those taking the extract chopped some 5 minutes from the time set by others who had taken a placebo. This encouraged Professor A.V. Korobkov to carry out trials with 1500 sportsmen at the Lesgraft Institute of Physical Culture and sports in Moscow.

Endurance

He confirmed that Eleutherococcus could increase endurance, as well as reflexes and concentration, particularly in the longer events. It was especially useful at increasing the amount of training that the athlete could tolerate without harm. The only side effect was an occasional and transient rise in blood pressure. "Nothing in common with doping" On the question of doping, Korobkov writes in a recent Soviet book: "Medicinal Preparations with Applications in Sports Medicine" published in Moscow in 1974 that Eleutherococcus and similar substances have "nothing in common with doping, their action is primarily aimed at accelerating the restorative processes after intensive activity and at increasing the body's resistance to unfavourable external influence". Eleutherococcus is taken widely throughout the Soviet Union for health purposes. Therefore if it came to a confrontation the Soviets would argue that as athletes use Eleutherococcus all the year round as part of a programme for their general fitness, it would be ridiculous to ban it just before the race.

Doping

They would point to the definition agreed by the Council of Europe in which doping occurs only when a drug is taken with the sole object of increasing an athlete's performance. Yet this argument is still academic. Western experts do not believe in Eleutherococcus sufficiently to ban it and it would have been taken freely before this year's Olympics as at previous international events. Soviet officials do discourage the use of Eleutherococcus by their athletes in the midst of sports events to avoid the "evil eye" of other sportsmen, so it is usually taken for some time before the event. Research has anyway shown this to be the most effective way of taking it.