Actovegin and blood spinning "Legal, hard to spot and open to misuse"

Blood spinning and Actovegin, two of the three techniques Dr Anthony Galea apparently uses, are similar to each other because they are cutting-edge sports medicine therapies that are on the edge of anti-doping regulations.

Doctors will always find cutting-edge treatments because they want to get sportspeople they are treating back on to the pitch as quickly as possible. But those treatments can come up against laws meant to prevent doping, and it is not clear what is and is not allowed.

Blood spinning is openly used and is endorsed by the English Institute of Sport. It is done to speed up recovery from injury, and involves taking some of a player's own blood, putting it into a centrifuge and separating out the platelets, or red and white blood cells, from the plasma, then reinjecting the concentrations of platelets, which look a bit like jelly.

Until now the World Anti Doping Agency's regulations have been vague, although from 1 January such injections will be allowed if they are into the joint, but not into the muscle. But there's huge potential for it to be misused, either by adding growth factors when the blood is reinjected or injecting it into the muscle. But is there really a difference between injecting it into the muscle and blood doping, which is banned by Wada?

Blood spinning would be a problem because it's very difficult to detect. A blood test won't tell you.

Human growth hormone is banned because it is a performance enhancing agent. It can promote the recovery of muscle tissue that's been damaged during hard training. It has more sophisticated benefits than steroids and is used by some bodybuilders. There are concerns about possible serious side-effects, such as the jaw, ears, teeth, hands and feet continuing to get bigger and bigger.

Actovegin is like blood spinning, except that the doctor would use an extract of calf's blood, not the patient's own blood. It's another way of getting people fit again. Media reports say that a lot of top athletes across a range of sports have tried it. The concern is that it could be a way of getting banned growth factors into the body. It's not banned, but Wada say they are closely monitoring it. The trouble is, if it's banned, can it be detected? Sadly, the answer at the moment is no.