[Carbohydrate deficient transferrin: what's new 20 years later?]

Abstract

The clinical diagnosis of alcohol abuse has frequently to be supported by biological data. These data help the practitioner to establish the diagnosis and to monitor the alcohol withdrawal and possible relapses. They also can help to demonstrate to the patient the existence of a denied alcohol abuse. CDT determination has been proposed for more than twenty years, but commercial kits are available since only 1990. A consensus has to be established concerning a reference method and the definition of the transferrin isoforms that should be included in the CDT. CDT is nevertheless considered in many studies as the best marker of alcohol abuse now available. Its sensitivity is at least equal to that of gamma glutamyltransferase (GGT), and its specificity remains very high even in the presence of other pathologies connected or not to the alcohol abuse. CDT is, despite the lack of standardisation and the cost of its determination, a basic marker of alcohol abuse more particularly in the circumstances of lack of efficiency of the other markers.