Pulyaev, a member of the team which won the gold medal at the Judo Team World Championships in Salvador in Brazil four years ago, is one of the athletes implicated, according to news agency TASS.

Also named are Denis Iartcev, Natalia Kondratieva and Yekaterina Valkova.

Iartcev earned under 73 kilogram silver at the International Judo Federation (IJF) Paris Grand Slam in January of this year.

Natalia Kondratieva represented her country at the 2012 Olympic Games in London in the under 48kg category.

Valkova has three Grand Prix bronze medals to her name in the under 63kg women’s weight division.

The alleged failed tests for the heart-attack drug come after Russia's leading male gymnast Nikolai Kuksenkov tested positive.

Another Russian, skeleton athlete Pavel Kulikov, has also admitted to having failed a test for the recently banned substance.

Kuksenkov, winner of the national individual all-around title in Pensa last Friday (April 1) before withdrawing the following day, was part of gold medal-winning teams at the 2014 European Championships in Sofia and the inaugural 2015 European Games in Baku.

Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko recently warned that as many as 30 athletes from the country may have tested positive for the drug.

These latest positive tests bring the total number of Russians known to have tested positive to 29, 27 of whom have been identified publicly. 

They come from 17 different sports and disciplines.

The drug was developed in Latvia and was only added to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) prohibited list on January 1 due to "evidence of its use by athletes with the intention of enhancing performance".

Mutko's claims followed WADA confirming there had been 123 meldonium cases since the substance was placed on the banned list.

The drug shot into the limelight when five-time Grand Slam champion Maria Sharapova announced she had failed a drugs test at the Australian Open in January at a hastily-arranged press conference in Los Angeles last month.

Since then, a host of top Russian names have returned positive tests for meldonium, including four-time world swimming champion Yuliya Yefimova.

Track cyclists Anastasia Chulkova, winner of the points race at the 2012 World Track Cycling Championships in Melbourne, and Pavel Yakushevsky, a team sprint bronze medallist at the 2013 European Track Cycling Championships, have also been implicated.

Others include speed skaters Pavel Kulizhnikov, Semyon Elistratov and Ekaterina Konstantinova, as well as ice dancer Ekaterina Bobrova.

Russia is not the only country to have been affected, however, with the International Weightlifting Federation having announced that double world champion and two-time Olympic silver medallist Andrei Rybakov of Belarus had recorded a positive test.

Wrestler István Lévai, a Hungarian-born Slovakian who won under 66 kilograms Greco-Roman bronze at Baku 2015, is one of the most recent athletes to have admitted to having failed.

insidethegames has contacted the International Judo Federation for comment.

List of Russians known to have tested positive for meldonium: