BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- The use of performance enhancing drugs in sports remains a serious and sensitive issue, and baseball officials joined some of the best and brightest minds in the field Monday to discuss the topic in broad terms while more specifically addressing human growth hormone (HGH).

A joint effort by Major League Baseball and the UCLA Medical School held the Growth Hormone Summit: Barriers to Implementation of HGH Testing in Sports.

Through multiple presentations at the daylong program, speakers outlined a variety of topics that included testing, ethics, scientific evidence, regulations and legal issues while discussing the role of performance enhancing drugs and the larger impact on sports.

"Our desire here is to demonstrate baseball's desire to be a leader in terms of the multisport international attempt to deal with the issue of performance enhancing substances," said Rob Manfred, MLB executive vice president for labor relations and human resources. "In terms of the specifics of the HGH issue, we found that a number of parties involved in this could benefit and find some common ground in terms of where we actually are. In terms of how we can test with blood. What is the ability for us to test on urine, and how do we deal with the problem of HGH?"

Manfred joined MLB president and chief operating officer Bob DuPuy; Gary Green, MD course director and clinical professor/division of sports medicine at UCLA; and Travis Tygart, chief executive for United States Anti-Doping Agency, to provide opening remarks.

Also in attendance was Gene Orza, chief operating officer for Major League Players Association, as part of a cooperative effort between the league office and the union.

"We want to get people on the same page and understand where (everyone is) and where the scientists believe we're getting to," DuPuy said. "All we can do is fund and put on programs like this and continue working with all of the concerned organizations to come up with a test as soon as possible."

The ultimate goal of the conference participants would be to create a reliable and universally acceptable test for the use of HGH in athletes, both at the amateur and professional levels. The scientific community is not in complete agreement about performance-enhancing properties as they pertain to HGH.

Because of the lack of a reliable test, HGH is not presently a part of drug-screening. It is the sensitivity and the scope of the issue that the seminar hoped to tackle in order to combine medical, scientific, legal and privacy concerns.

Currently, the lone FDA approved uses for HGH are AIDS wasting syndrome, pituitary dwarfism in children, and adult growth hormone deficiency. Companies in the U.S. produce growth hormone, but it is also produced in China, Ireland and Mexico.

While the prevailing opinions of those assembled Monday suggest that HGH is being used by some athletes, the body of evidence is anecdotal in nature, based generally on what some competitors have said.

Part of Monday's presentation included the substantiation of claims that HGH is a performance enhancer. Richard Holt, MD, PhD of the University of Southampton School of Medicine, said HGH not only builds muscle mass but also reduces fat mass.

But Holt also reported the lack of reliable data to determine how much an athlete benefits from HGH. It has been theorized that HGH has been used by athletes for the past 25 years, while the scientific community has been playing catch-up, only gaining ground in the last year in an effort to create a test.

Holt also said, and other speakers on Monday agreed, that HGH is likely used in concert with other agents such as anabolic steroids. Holt further detailed long-term health issues related to prolonged use of HGH.

Having a reliable test for the detection of possible performance enhancers, all agreed, is critical to the integrity of baseball and all sports. Labs have been making strides.

"We're definitely seeing progress. I wish I could tell you we have a growth hormone test today. We don't," said Don Catlin, a leader and pioneer in performance-enhancing drug tests. "I can tell you we have made substantial progress that I am excited about."

Orza said the players would be on board once there is a breakthrough.

"We are not opposed to blood testing. We have said we will consider blood testing when the time is right for it," Orza said. "When someone is able to determine whether or not that human growth hormone independently is performance enhancing."

Catlin, who was the founder and past director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory, said it took some 20 years to develop a reliable test for anabolic steroids. He said the industry is in the middle of similar progress for HGH. Catlin cited specifically the size of the molecule in growth hormone as compared to anabolic steroids but also the problem of extracting growth hormone from a urine test.

There are positive and negative aspects to both urine and blood tests, but the collective bargaining agreement in baseball does not currently allow for blood tests.

The efforts of those assembled Monday received a recent boost from Lance Liotta, MD, PhD of George Mason University, who is applying nanotechnology techniques previously used in cancer research to testing for HGH.

"That is what is exciting about what Dr. Liotta is doing. He has a technique that we think will do that," Catlin said. "It is really brilliant."

Catlin also said there is no reasonable timeframe to give when a test might be available. But he added that once the protocols are fine-tuned, they'll be close to a test.

For baseball, it is a matter of using Monday's information to plot next steps.

"We have to try and digest what we've heard today and have further conversations in order to encourage further developments in this area," Manfred said. "I also think we will be working closely with USADA and the NFL and the Partnership for Clean Competition to figure out exactly how the funding for these efforts should be accomplished on a go-forward basis."