A simple method for carbohydrate-deficient transferrin measurements in patients with alcohol abuse and hepato-gastrointestinal diseases.

Carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) is known to be increased in alcohol abuse. Several methods were developed for its measurement (e.g. isoelectric focusing with Western blotting or immunofixation, anion-exchange chromatography followed by immunoassays). We describe a greatly simplified isoelectric focusing technique which does not require immunofixation. CDT results obtained with this method were compared to other biological markers of alcohol abuse, i.e. mean corpuscular volume (MCV), aspartate aminotransferase (ASAT) and gamma-glutamyl-transferase (GGT), in 55 patients distributed in three groups (i.e. healthy control subjects, control patients suffering from various hepato-gastrointestinal diseases and alcohol abusing patients). Sensitivity and specificity were 33-89%, 61-57%, 89-49% and 83-100% for MCV, ASAT, GGT and CDT, respectively. We conclude that our method is highly suitable for routine clinical use.