Im. Mikkelsen et al., Carbohydrate-deficient transferrin: Marker of actual alcohol consumption or chronic alcohol misuse?, ALC ALCOHOL, 33(6), 1998, pp. 646-650
Carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) is a useful indicator of excessive
alcohol consumption with higher sensitivity and specificity than other mar
kers 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 repor
ted a long history of alcohol abuse. Several of these, as well as many of t
he non-dependent patients, reported a high, recent alcohol consumption (gre
ater than or equal to 60 g/day for the previous 2 weeks). CDT performed bet
ter in detecting patients with alcohol dependency than in detecting patient
s 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 receiver-operating characteristic curve area
s (P = 0.04 in a two-tailed comparison test). In two subgroups, one with al
cohol-dependent and one with non-dependent patients, consuming similar amou
nts 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 ch
ronic alcohol misuse than as a marker for high actual alcohol consumption a
lone.