REDUCING URINE CONTAMINATION

Lab Tests Online. (May 11, 2005). Urine culture. [https://www.labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/urine_culture/sample.html].

"Urine for a culture can be collected at any time. Because of the potential to contaminate urine with bacteria and cells from the surrounding skin during collection (particularly in women), it is important to first clean the genitalia. Women should spread the labia of the vagina and clean from front to back; men should wipe the tip of the penis. As you start to urinate, let some urine fall into the toilet, then collect one to two ounces of urine in the sterile container provided, then void the rest into the toilet. This type of collection is called a mid-stream clean catch urine".

Implication. Contamination of urine samples causes banned substances to increase in their presence. Consequently, a failure to preserve the best quality sample increases the likelihood of a test result surpassing a doping-standard when in fact it should have read negative if appropriate quality testing were undertaken.

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