BLOOMBERG.COM points us to what may be the next big thing in sports performance enhancement: MYO-029.

Producers of a new treatment for patients with muscular dystrophy and ALS already have concerns that Olympic athletes may use it for performance enhancement. And they’re not very happy about the scrutiny that these drugs are getting.

” ‘I get angry about it,’ said Dr. Se-Jin Lee, the Johns Hopkins University scientist who discovered a protein being developed for diseases including muscular dystrophy. ‘The scientific potential to make people’s lives vastly improved is incredible. And all we talk about is whether some athlete can use it to hit a baseball farther.’ ”

The MYO-029 that Dr. Lee and others are developing would block myostatin and reverse that atrophy, in turn accelerating the growth of the treated muscles. Dr. Lee discovered myostatin in 1997; it’s the natural protein in the body that causes atrophy (shrinkage) of human muscle, whether through illness, age or lack of use.

“The new drugs may be particularly difficult to detect because they are injected directly into the targeted tissues and could be designed not to show up in urine and blood tests, researchers say.”

The World Anti-Doping Agency says the non-steroid treatment could show up in this year’s Olympics, and has already banned myostatin blockers, despite the fact that (a) researchers haven’t even determined whether the drugs are safe for human consumption, and (b) the drugs may not even be detectable through blood or urine screens. But that isn’t stopping those hungry to get an edge.

“U.S. newspapers and magazines picked up on medical journal reports of his work, and football coaches started calling, [Dr. Lee] Sweeney says. One offered his own athletes as test subjects.

‘I kept telling them that my research had only been done on mice and that it could potentially kill a person,’ Sweeney said. ‘I finally had to hang up on some of them.’ ”

In a related note, mice have just been banned from Olympic competition.