It is critical to assess the severity of alcohol consumption in certain diseases such as alcohol\nliver disease and alcohol addiction. Ethyl glucuronide (EtG) is a highly stable metabolite of ethanol\nin hair; thus, it was proposed as a long-term monitoring marker for alcohol consumption. Therefore,\nan HPLC-MS/MS method for EtG in hair was developed and applied to a clinical setting to assess\nthe relevance of the EtG concentration and/or the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT)\nscore to high-risk alcohol consumption. EtG was extracted from 10 mg of hair using water and\nanalyzed using on-line sample purification coupled to HPLC-MS/MS. The diagnostic performances\nof the EtG concentration and/or the AUDIT score for detecting high-risk alcohol consumption were\nstatistically evaluated between alcohol addicts (n = 44) and average alcohol users (n = 19). The on-line\nsample purification resulted in labor-saving with smaller sample amount. Both the EtG concentrations\n(4.0â??587.4 pg/mg vs. 12.9â??74.9 pg/mg) and the AUDIT scores (4â??40 vs. 5â??28) obtained from the\nalcohol addicts were significantly higher than those from the average alcohol users. The performance\nevaluation demonstrated that the integration score of the EtG concentration and the AUDIT score\nincreased diagnostic performance for high-risk alcohol consumption.
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