Multiple serum enzyme analyses in chronic alcoholics.

Abstract

Abstract. Multiple serum enzyme analyses in 100 chronic alcoholics with a history of heavy drinking revealed that most serum enzyme activities were increased in some of these patients. Increased serum creatine kinase activity, characteristic of muscle injury, was found in 43 patients. Since cardiac damage could be excluded by other enzyme tests, skeletal muscle damage seems to be common in alcoholic patients. Elevated serum ornithine carbamoyl transferase (OCT), which is specific for liver damage, was found in 56 patients. Serum GOT, commonly used for detection of liver damage, seems in alcoholics to be partly released from skeletal muscles and should thus be replaced by the more specific OCT, for which there is a simple method. In alcoholics the increased serum activity of the intramitochondrial enzyme, glutamate dehydrogenase, suggests a rather severe liver damage in nearly half of the patients. Serum guanine deaminase (guanase) was pathological less often than the other “liver enzymes”. Heavy increased values were encountered often in serum γ‐glutamyltranspeptidase but leucine aminopeptidase and alkaline phosphatase were less often elevated.