Clinical Research Unit, National Hospital Organization Kurihama Alcoholism Center, Yokosuka, Japan.
Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2012 Oct;36(10):1820-6. doi: 10.1111/j.1530-0277.2012.01795.x. Epub 2012 Apr 6.
The biomarkers of excessive alcohol intake reported thus far have not always been reliable. We discovered the presence of free glycerol (FG) by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) in the serum of alcoholic patients but not in healthy persons, and a higher percentage of the alcoholics were positive for serum FG than for gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase, mean corpuscular volume, or carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (%CDT). Therefore, in this study, we investigated whether the same results as with HPLC could be obtained by measuring FG with an easy-to-use autoanalyzer and whether the serum FG measured by this method would be useful as a biomarker of excessive alcohol intake.
First, the measurements of serum FG made by HPLC and by a biochemical method with an autoanalyzer were tested for a correlation, and then fasting serum FG was measured with the autoanalyzer in 3 groups: a group of Japanese male alcoholics who drank until just before admission, a group of Japanese male patients with chronic viral hepatitis, and a group of Japanese healthy male volunteers.
There was a strong positive correlation between the serum FG values measured by HPLC and by the autoanalyzer in the alcoholic group. The values in the alcoholic group were significantly higher than in the viral hepatitis group and healthy control group. We set the cutoff serum FG value for discriminating between the alcoholic group and the other 2 groups in the receiver operating characteristic analysis at 0.9 mg/dl, and that cutoff value provided a sensitivity of 80% for identifying the alcoholic group and a specificity of 84 and 94% in relation to the viral hepatitis group and the healthy volunteer group, respectively. Among various clinical tests in the alcoholic group, serum FG showed the highest rate of abnormally high value.
Measurement of serum FG with an autoanalyzer may be useful as a biomarker of excessive alcohol intake.
迄今为止，报告的过量饮酒生物标志物并不总是可靠的。我们通过高效液相色谱（HPLC）在酒精性患者的血清中发现了游离甘油（FG）的存在，但在健康人中不存在，并且酒精性患者的血清 FG 阳性率高于γ-谷氨酰转肽酶、平均红细胞体积或糖缺乏转铁蛋白（%CDT）。因此，在这项研究中，我们研究了是否可以通过使用易于使用的自动分析仪测量 FG 获得与 HPLC 相同的结果，以及该方法测量的血清 FG 是否可作为过量饮酒的生物标志物。
首先，测试了 HPLC 和生化自动分析仪两种方法测量血清 FG 的相关性，然后使用自动分析仪测量了 3 组人群的空腹血清 FG：一组日本男性酗酒者，他们在入院前一直饮酒；一组日本慢性病毒性肝炎男性患者；一组日本健康男性志愿者。
酒精组中 HPLC 和自动分析仪测量的血清 FG 值之间存在强正相关。酒精组的值明显高于病毒性肝炎组和健康对照组。在受试者工作特征分析中，我们将区分酒精组和其他 2 组的血清 FG 截止值设定为 0.9mg/dl，该截止值为识别酒精组提供了 80%的敏感性，分别为 84%和 94%的特异性病毒性肝炎组和健康志愿者组。在酒精组的各种临床检查中，血清 FG 异常值的发生率最高。
使用自动分析仪测量血清 FG 可能是一种有用的过量饮酒生物标志物。
