"There are known cases where minute amounts of a diuretic have been found in paracetamol" - Michel Hessmann's positive doping test down to contaminated medicine?

It depends, each manufacturer has their recipe. I have found one fir sure, Calpol for adults, it isn’t in their child version. By the way, Mannitol being so useful is added to a wide variety of medication. If you want to search for it in food, it’s easiest by searching for E421, also E420 is Sorbitol and also has a diuretic effect. Doesn’ttake long b4 you realise doping has become a management nightmare, every team at the pro level now has to have an expert to permanently question and educate each athlete on what to eat/drink or not all year round.

The Drugs dot com paracetamol page lists ingredients of half a dozen or so brands sold in the US at the bottom but I didn’t find anything easy for the ones sold in Europe.

Never heared these banned substance coming from medications before. Normally, those banned substances are came from contaminated supplements or improperly prepared food, and most of the "doping" cases, are came from the former case.

It’s pretty disappointing to hear from someone selling themselves as from the industry having no clue of the problem. I do not work in the industry but did get a high level scientific education which, unfortunately, allows me to expose incompetence far too often and quickly. What you say, like politicians so often, is not wrong but either far too specific, selective (I won’t accuse you of deliberate although you obviously do not want to keep an open mind until all the evidence becomes available) or irrelevant. You don’t seem to know much about paracetamol as this has nothing to do with contamination. As stated in the article, it is a relatively well-known problem so let’s ask why. P itself is rather water-insoluble so manufacturers add stabilisers on purpose to help dissolve it. As things would have it, one of the most popular additives to achieve this is Mannitol (often added to food or drinks as a sweetener too) which is a diuretic.

Mannitol is banned as an intravenous aid but cannot be banned from oral ingestion (common sweetener), the problems come with differentiating the two and this will become a very technico-legal case as you’ll understand if you search for the introduction to the scientic paper « Urinary concentrations of AICAR and mannitol in athlete population «  No idea how it will play out, as always with borderline cases.

Sad hearing that these people are not properly researched whatever they eat or drink these days. Most of these "doping" cases are easilly preventable, imo. Cross contaminations can easilly being confused with actual doping, which sporting government bodies are still underprepared for this.

I would not accuse anyone of deliberately contaminated atheletes' A or B stool, blood, or urine samples, although those working in phamacutical areas, are obviously doesn't want to keep an open mind, until all evidence are available for investigations, or irrelevant.

Did not know that Mannitol was a banned substance as an intravenous aid, but not as an oral ingestion, (aka common sweetener). The biggest problem is that differentiates the two and this one will become a very technological case, since you will understand, if you're search it, easiest through urine samples of the atheletes.