The creator of the banned drug, in an interview with SE, explained how mildronate works, stated that it cannot be considered doping, and said that the famous tennis player Maria Sharapova used the Latvian medicine due to health problems

Latvian professor Ivars Kalvins is considered to be the creator of mildronate, perhaps the most popular drug this year. However, he himself modestly calls himself one of those who actively worked on its development more than 30 years ago.

“I only invented one molecule,” notes Kalvins. – The drug was created through the joint efforts of a huge team of scientists. Buying meldonium online is needed.

Why?

You know how an internal combustion engine works, right? It is known that the amount of air in it must correspond to the amount of fuel. Then the motor works fine. If there is more fuel, it stalls. So it is with the heart. Only instead of fuel there are fatty acids and sugar. If there is a normal supply of oxygen to the muscle, everything is fine. No – fatty acids are not burned.

And mildronate allows you to normalize their correct ratio in the heart?

Exactly. It turned out that it is possible to limit the flow of fatty acids inward. If this is not done, they will simply dissolve the cell membranes, causing them to burst like soap bubbles. This can lead to permanent damage to muscles, including the myocardium and brain.

Do athletes have a higher risk of this than ordinary people?

When an athlete exceeds the limits of his training – and this happens very often – then exactly what I just talked about happens. Mildronate does not increase a person’s capabilities, but only restores his performance to normal. And athletes are simply obliged to take it to protect themselves from irreversible consequences.

Another important point. Your St. Petersburg scientists conducted a study according to which among young athletes the number of sudden deaths is 2 to 10 times higher than in the average population. We must prevent this.

TO CLAIM THAT MILDRONATE IS DOPING,
THIS IS NOT SCIENTIFIC

Why do you think WADA added meldonium to the prohibited list?

I was very disappointed when I found out about this. After all, there are no studies that would suggest that mildronate helps a person jump further or run faster. Athletes have no right to use drugs of this kind. But they all have the right to live.

What did you think when you learned that world sports superstars, such as Maria Sharapova, were disqualified for using a drug created, including by you?

By the way, I knew that Maria uses it. Sharapova simply would not exist if she had not been taking Mildronate in recent years. She has certain problems. Not only top-class athletes, but politicians, both in Russia and in the USA, take mildronate when playing tennis. So what?

Maybe mildronate has some other properties?

Eat. Many men take it to maintain not only their athletic form, but also their sexual fitness. I’m serious. But to say that mildronate is doping is not scientific. Understand that sport is generally harmful to health. We conducted an experiment: one group of people actively played sports, ran marathons, and monitored their diet. And the other group did nothing. In the first group, atherosclerosis manifested itself in people much more often than in the second!

And sport of the highest achievements entails an extremely high load on the heart, blood vessels and brain. After all, as soon as oxygen starvation occurs, lactic acid is released into the blood. And she is poison for any cell. And athletes need help. If we follow the logic of current scientists, then athletes should refuse benign food. After all, if a person eats well, he will be more productive. And this is an advantage!

WADA WILL BE FORCED TO RETURN

What further steps can WADA take now?

There are world-famous law firms that contacted me on behalf of the athletes they caught, so that I could help them explain to WADA how it could be that people have not taken mildronate for a long time, but they still have it.

The athletes themselves also called, claiming that they had not taken the drug for three months, but they were disqualified.

I think WADA will be forced to admit that due to the great variability in the presence of meldonium in the body of athletes who have not taken it for a long time, they are not able to accurately determine how long it takes to eliminate it. And those who are not recognized as using mildronate after January 1 must be rehabilitated. If not, then after the Olympics they will be sued and forced to back down.

MELDONIUM MAY BE FOUND
IN THE BODY UP TO 120 DAYS

Some believe that the story of adding mildronate to the prohibited list is the result of a war between pharmaceutical companies.

Alas, but I think so too. Some of our competitors were on the prohibited list, and they apparently wanted to take mildronate with them.

But in the end they only added to the popularity.

A good drug does not require any advertising. But she won’t help the bad. After all, even before all these doping cases, Mildronate was in 10th – 12th place in sales among all drugs in general. I’m talking about Russia. About two million people used it. But there is also Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan.

The most important question from the entire sports world to you now is this: how long is meldonium removed from the body?

If WADA representatives had carefully studied my work, there would not be such a fuss now. You need to understand that the numbers on the instructions, which everyone speculates on, refer to the half-life after a single dose. In other words, after nine hours half of the meldonium is excreted, after another nine – 50 percent of the remaining half, and so on. In general, about 20-30 elimination half-life is required. And this is after a single use! What if you took not one gram, but 20?

Many athletes have been taking it for years.

According to my calculations, meldonium can remain in the body for up to 120 days. We conducted studies on volunteers, looking at how mildronate reduces the concentration of carnitine – the very vehicle that drags fatty acids into the myocardium. And we were convinced that if you take 1 gram of mildronate per day for four weeks, you can displace no more than 25% of all carnitine. What does mildronate do? It does not allow carnitine to be absorbed back from urine and inhibits its biosynthesis. After all, we have carnitine in every cell in all our muscles. But if you take mildronate for a long time, after a certain time it will be as much as carnitine. And it won’t be so easy to oust him.

P.S. Chairman of the Board of JSC Grindeks (the pharmaceutical company that produces mildronate) Juris Bundulis stated that mildronate does not correspond to any of the points as a drug that should be included in the WADA prohibited list. And he called on the World Anti-Doping Agency for an open dialogue. “We want that from January 1, 2017, mildronate will not be on the prohibited list,” Bundulis said.