As a researcher, it can sometimes be difficult to explain to the person sitting beside you at a dinner party what it is that you actually do at work.

Pia Johansson Heinsvig, however, can talk about a topic that interests most people. They prick up their ears when she describes how she works on methods of uncovering the abuse of performance-enhancing substances through wastewater analyses from sports rallies or fitness centres. Or about how she receives confiscated hauls of steroids from three police districts in order to keep track of what is happening on the illegal market.

She holds an MSc in Medicinal Chemistry, and when she submits her PhD dissertation next summer, Pia Heinsvig will have been with the Department of Forensic Medicine for eight years.

The user can die of a heart attack

It was not a white lab coat that Pia Heinsvig otherwise dreamed of wearing when she was a teenager. She played football at elite level and managed to play one match as a goalkeeper in the 3F Super League. But more than ten concussions and five knee operations forced her to retire before her career had really begun.

“I took the decision that when I started at the university, it was important that I had a head that worked,” she says.

When she asked the study counsellor on her Bachelor degree programme whether it was possible to combine an interest in chemistry and sport, he replied ‘doping’ – and coincidentally, the Department of Forensic Medicine had just started analysing seized steroids. As a result, Pia Heinsvig, through her Bachelor, Master’s and now PhD studies, has become an expert in a niche area which, in her opinion, has been given too little attention in Denmark.

“We monitor the narcotics market quite closely, but there is no systematic follow-up on the types of steroids and other performance-enhancing substances that Danes order from abroad and use,” she says.

“We live in a culture in which there is a huge focus on looking good and performing, so it’s odd that there isn’t more focus on what happens within doping. In particular, we could look more closely at the biggest group, the steroids, which, like narcotics, can have severe health consequences,” says the 28-year-old researcher.

Long-term use of steroids does not just give the user pimples and a bull neck – it can also result in infertility and depression. In extreme cases, because the heart is also a muscle that grows, the user can die from cardiac arrest.

Sweden and Norway are further ahead than Denmark when it comes to recognising the use of steroids as drugs abuse and establishing treatment clinics, and Pia Heinsvig hopes that her PhD project, entitled “Dopingstoffer i Danmark” (Doping substances in Denmark), will help to bring the topic into focus.

Is there overrepresentation in cases of violence?

While she was developing a method for analysing seized steroids, Pia Heinsvig received confiscated substances from the Aalborg police for a year. After analysing all the samples, she could see which substances appeared most frequently, and whether they stemmed from the same production source.

In her PhD, she is now looking at confiscated hauls from Aalborg, Odense and Copenhagen. By analysing all of the substances she received from the three police districts for a year, Pia Heinsvig has acquired an overview of which doping substances have been on the market during the period, and the frequency with which they are found. She can then apply her knowledge about what is on the market to target her analyses of urine and wastewater.

She aims to study how many doping users appear in forensic samples from personal examinations, and whether there may be an overrepresentation in cases of violence. She also aims to investigate whether it is possible to find doping substances in wastewater from selected buildings where exercise is practised, such as fitness centres and sport centres.

DR got hold of freight papers

Pia Heinsvig is willing to talk about her research to anyone who wishes to hear about it. She visits upper secondary schools to talk about her work and her pathway to a career as a researcher, and she is happy to take part in the university’s current expert lists on, for example, the World Cup in football. 

In the autumn of 2022, she wrote a popular scientific article in Forskerzonen – This is how wastewater, sweat and hair can be used in the fight against doping – which resulted in an article in the Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad. She has also previously appeared on the P1 radio channel to talk about doping confiscations when DR journalists got hold of freight documents from some of the producers of performance-enhancing drugs. Pia Heinsvig checked the documents and was able to see that several of the products had ended up on the Danish market.

It is naturally a gift to communication work when you conduct research within a field that fascinates the general public. But Pia Heinsvig believes that, regardless of the field you work in, you have an obligation to try to inform others and qualify the public debate.

“As a researcher, you are often the one who knows most about a topic. We need to go out and talk about what we know. That’s one of the most important things we can do in life.”

About the research

• Pia Heinsvig has developed methods for profiling anabolic steroids using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. That means that she can see information about the mass of the material and the mass of the fragments of the substance, and can thereby work out which substance it is.
• Through statistical processing of the chromatographic peaks in the samples, she can conclude whether the samples stem from the same production source.
• Today, Pia Heinsvig has further developed her research to include urine samples. She is conducting research into whether it is possible to use wastewater-based epidemiology to investigate whether doping is being practised in selected buildings.
• You can see an example of Pia Heinsvig’s research here: Development of a method using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry for profiling of oil-based androgenic anabolic steroid products
• Here you can read a popular scientific presentation of the topic: How waste water, sweat and hair can be used in the fight against doping

Contact

 Pia Heinsvig, PhD student
Aarhus University, Department of Forensic Medicine
Tel. +45 5095 8585
E-mail: pjni@forens.au.dk