Citation

Freeman WM, Salzberg AC, Gonzales SW, Grant KA, Vrana KE. Biol. Psychiatry 2010; 68(3): 219-222.

Affiliation

Department of Pharmacology, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.biopsych.2010.01.028

PMID

20299005

PMCID

PMC2890298

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Biochemical diagnostics of ethanol intake would improve alcohol abuse treatment and have applications in clinical trial and public safety settings. Self-reporting of alcohol use has clinical utility but lacks the desired reliability. Previously, proposed single-analyte biochemical tests of alcohol intake suffer from low sensitivity and specificity or examine only acute drinking and have therefore seen limited clinical use. METHODS: To address this unmet need, plasma protein biomarker discovery and validation were performed with an alcohol self-administering nonhuman primate model system to develop a diagnostic that accurately classifies subjects into nondrinking, nonabusive drinking, and abusive drinking categories. RESULTS: A 17-plasma protein panel was determined that correctly classifies abusive drinking with 100% sensitivity and also differentiates any level of drinking from alcohol abstinence with 88% accuracy. CONCLUSIONS: The biomarker panel reflects changes in multiple organ systems and suggests robust changes in the plasma proteome with drinking that might serve as a sensitive and specific diagnostic test. The specific plasma proteins altered with alcohol self-administration might represent indicators of alcohol-induced stress on a variety of organ systems.

Language: en