Alcohol and Its Biomarkers: Clinical Aspects and Laboratory Determination

Alcohol is one of the most widely used and abused drugs in the United States and the world. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 134 million Americans—more than half of the adult population— report being current drinkers, with nearly 18 million, or approximately 1 in every 12 adults, meeting the criteria for an alcohol use disorder.1 Nearly 90,000 alcohol-attributable deaths occur annually in the United States, making excessive alcohol use the fourth leading preventable cause of death.2 The annual economic costs of alcohol consumption were $223.5 billion in 2006, the last year for which there were comprehensive national estimates.3 As a result, Alcohol and Its Biomarkers is a timely and pertinent work. The book is organized into 10 concise chapters. The topics of those chapters include a general introduction to the drug; genetic aspects of alcohol metabolism and drinking behavior; measurement of alcohol concentrations in body fluids; an introduction to alcohol biomarkers; hepatic enzymes; mean corpuscular volume and carbohydrate-deficient transferrin; β-hexosaminidase, acetaldehyde-protein adducts, and dolichol; ethyl glucuronide, ethyl sulfate, fatty acid ethyl esters, and phosphatidylethanol; less commonly used biomarkers and proteomics and biomarker discovery; and genetic markers of alcohol use disorders.