Effect of one-week oral or inhaled salbutamol treatment with washout on repeated sprint performance in trained subjects

Background: Acute and chronic supratherapeutic treatment with the commonly usedbeta2-agonist salbutamol has the potential to enhance sprint performance and musclestrength. However, little is known about the performance effects of short-term dailypermitted inhaled treatment vs oral prohibited treatment in accordance with the 2020Prohibited List issued by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).Methods: Herein, we investigated the effect of twice-daily treatment with 400 μginhaled or 4 mg oral salbutamol for 1 week on repeated sprint performance in 19healthy well-trained men and women utilizing a randomized open-label crossoverdesign. Before and after each treatment period, and a 12-16 hours washout to avoidan acute effect of salbutamol, subjects performed a repeated sprint test (3 × 30-second Wingate).Results: Neither oral nor inhaled salbutamol enhanced peak power (oral; 3.0 W; 95%CI −6.8 to 12.8 W; and inhaled; −3.8 W; 95% CI −14.3 to 6.8 W) or mean power(oral; −2.1 W; 95% CI −4.7 to 8.9 W and inhaled; −1.6 W; 95% CI −5.6 to 8.9 W)during the repeated sprint test irrespective of gender.Conclusions: These findings indicate that 1 week is insufficient for salbutamol toinduce any relevant effect on repeated sprint performance in trained individuals