© 1998 Medical Council on Alcohol
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CARBOHYDRATE-DEFICIENT TRANSFERRIN: MARKER OF ACTUAL ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION OR CHRONIC ALCOHOL MISUSE?
Institute of Medical Biology, University of Tromsø N-9037 Tromsø. Norway
1Kliniken des Kreises Pinneberg Kreiskrankenhaus Elmshorn. Germany
2Institute of Community Medicine, University of Tromsø N-9037 Tromsø. Norway
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed
Received 5 March 1998; first review notified 24 April 1998; accepted 1 June 1998
Carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) is a useful indicator of excessive alcohol consumption with higher sensitivity and specificity than other markers that are used. In the present study, CDT was analysed in 161 patients hospitalized in a surgical ward to evaluate whether history of drinking and chronic alcohol misuse are important determinants of CDT elevations. Fifty-one of the patients were diagnosed as alcohol-dependent and they all reported a long history of alcohol abuse Several of these, as well as many of the non-dependent patients, reported a high, recent alcohol consumption (
60 g/day for the previous 2 weeks). CDT performed better in detecting patients with alcohol dependency than in detecting patients with high alcohol consumption irrespective of dependency, showing higher sensitivity (47 vs 37%), likelihood ratio (4.7 vs 3.4), and a statistically significant difference in the receiveroperating characteristic curve areas (P = 0.04 in a two-tailed comparison test). In two subgroups, one with alcohol-dependent and one with non-dependent patients, consuming similar amounts of alcohol (range: 60–170 g/day), the sensitivity of CDT was 52 and 5%, respectively. We conclude that CDT is a better marker for patients with chronic alcohol misuse than as a marker for high actual alcohol consumption alone.
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