Abstract
Alcohol ingestion can cause widespread metabolic changes which form the basis of most laboratory tests for alcohol abuse, e.g. measurement of concentrations or activities of serum urea, urate, aspartate transaminase and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase and mean cell volume. The use of these tests for the detection of alcohol abuse is growing and yet little is known of their value, particularly in population studies. The aims of this study were to determine the magnitude of various metabolic responses to different levels of alcohol consumption and to determine the sensitivity and specificity of biochemical and haematological tests for alcohol abuse based on such responses. The population investigated was a group of government employees. Significant differences in the distribution of analyte concentrations of biochemical/haematology profiles between alcohol abusers and others were demonstrated. The sensitivity and specificity of commonly used tests for alcohol abuse, serum GGT, AspT, urate, urea and mcv were found to be poor, although specificity could be improved by using combinations of tests. The use of these tests for the detection of alcohol abuse may be more effective in screening ‘at risk’ populations in which the prevalence of alcohol abuse is high.
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