A copula-based Bayesian framework for doping detection

Doping control is an essential component of anti-doping organizations for protecting sport competitions. Since 2009, this mission has been complemented worldwide by the Athlete Biological Passport (ABP), used to monitor athletes’ individual profiles over time. The practical implementation of the ABP is based on a Bayesian framework, called ADAPTIVE, intended to identify individual reference ranges outside of which an observation may indicate doping abuse. Currently, this method follows a univariate approach, relying on simultaneous analysis of different markers. This work extends the ADAPTIVE method to a multivariate testing framework, making use of copula models to couple the marginal distribution of biomarkers with their dependence structure. After introducing the proposed copula-based hierarchical model, we discuss our approach to inference, grounded in a Bayesian spirit, and present an extension to multidimensional predictive reference regions. Focusing on the hematological module of the ABP, we evaluate the proposed framework in both data-driven simulations and real data.