What is EPO and how does it help athletes?

Erythropoietin—more commonly known as EPO—is a type of blood doping that can help improve an athlete’s endurance. EPO stimulates the production of red blood cells in bone marrow and regulates the concentration of red blood cells and haemoglobin in the blood.Click to see full answer. Thereof, why is EPO a performance enhancing drug?It boosts the number of red blood cells, thereby increasing the transport of oxygen to the muscles. This leads to improvements in performance, which can especially give endurance athletes such as cyclists or marathon runners the edge.Subsequently, question is, why is EPO illegal in sports? The drug erythropoietin, often called EPO, is banned from sports because it is believed to enhance an athlete’s performance and give people who use it an unfair advantage over unenhanced competitors. EPO thickens a person’s blood, which can lead to an increased risk of clots. Similarly, you may ask, how much does EPO increase performance? Study: EPO Effective, Long-Lasting. Improves 3-K time by 6%; effects last at least four weeks. A new and nicely designed study of EPO’s effect on distance runners has shown that four weeks of every-other-day injections improves 3000-meter running time by an average of 6%.What has EPO got to do with top level sport?Its overall effect is to increase endurance and, in athletics, it is used mainly by long distance-runners. It is injected under the skin and stimulates red blood cell production. The more red cells there are in your body, the more oxygen that can be delivered to the muscles.