Conventional biological markers utlity: alcoholism and liver disease.
4th Congress of the European Federation of Internal Medicine
(Berlín, 10-13 de septiembre de 2003) Autores: Segado A., Gomez-Gallego F., Santiago C., Girones J., Cortes C., Sanz J., Bañares R., Alvarez E., Bandrés F. Tipo de comunicación: Panel. Ámbito del congreso: Interacional.
In order to evaluate the utility of some conventional biological markers, representative of alcohol consumption, in the identification of alcohol intake in patients with different kind of liver disease, we determined levels of erythrocyte mean corpuscular volume (MCV), glutamic-oxaloacetic transaminase (GOT), glutamic-pyruvate transaminase (GPT) and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT) in 105 Spanish patients with liver disease classified in the following groups, taking as a basis the alcohol consumption: GROUP 1: Non-alcoholic patients (N=50); GROUP 2: Alcoholic patients without alcoholic acute hepatitis (AAH) (N=30); GROUP 3: Alcoholic patients with AAH (N=25), where criteria for alcoholism was established as an ingestion of alcohol higher than 80 g/day during the last 5 years.
Analytic determination of MVC were performed in an haematological counter “Coulter Hens” whereas GOT, GPT and GGT levels were determined by colorimetric immunoassay in an autoanalyzer Roche- Hitachi Modular P.
Results are shown in Table 1:
SEX
(M/F)
MCV
(fl)
GOT
(UI/l)
GPT
(UI/l)
GGT
(UI/l)
Group 1
24/26
89±4
40±33 (M)
50±37 (F)
77±85 (M)
69±58 (F)
47±58 (M)
61±40 (F)
Group 2
24/4
97±10
72±48 (M)
61±30 (F)
55±40 (M)
69±37 (F)
196±237 (M)
85±31 (F)
Group 3
12/14
104±8
143±47 (M)
182±124 F)
60±34 (M)
64±47 (F)
365±562 (M)
247±184 (F)
Conclusions:
Alcoholic patients (GROUPS 2 and 3) had larger MCV values than non-alcoholic subjects (GROUP 1).
GOT and GGT activities were significantly greater in alcoholic patients (GROUP 3 > GROUP 2) than those in non-alcoholic patients.
GPT is a low specific marker as reveal the similar activity levels found in all the three groups studied.
The combination of several conventional biological markers could be useful in the diagnostic of early states of alcoholism in patients with liver disease.
Work partially supported by grant from the Fundación Mapfre Medicina (2001/2002)
