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Ethyl glucuronide in hair and alcohol misuse

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Handbook of hair in health and disease

Part of the book series: Human Health Handbooks no. 1 ((HHH,volume 1))

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Abstract

Alcohol misuse is a global challenge accounting to many loss of lives and to significant economical costs. Generally, traditional alcohol markers have low alcohol specificity, resulting both in false positives due to a number of physiological disorders and in false negative diagnosis due to their poor sensitivities. On the other hand, direct alcohol markers are more specific, but have other limitations. Ethyl glucuronide in hair (EtGH) fulfills almost all criteria for an ideal alcohol biomarker. The essential pre-analytical aspects involved in the measurement of EtGH, the major analytical improvements involved in its detection and selected aspects to ensure high quality, legally defensible results are illustrated. An extensive number of factors which may play a role in the interpretation of EtGH results, including the establishment of cut-offs for EtGH, the correlation of EtGH to the amount of alcohol ingested, the stability of EtGH, the various mechanisms proposed for the incorporation and elimination of EtGH, natural hair color, shampooing, cosmetic treatment, and environmental factors are discussed. For people lacking head hair, EtG was also determined in other non-head body hair. EtGH is a test already in routine use in different areas; these indications of EtGH and potential ones are illustrated as well.

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Abbreviations

ALT:

Alanine aminotransferase

AST:

Aspartate aminotransferase

BMI:

Body mass index

CDT:

Carbohydrate deficient transferrin

EDI:

Ethanol daily intake in g/day

EtG:

Ethyl glucuronide

EtGH:

Ethyl glucuronide in head hair

FAS:

Fetal alcohol syndrome

GC-MS:

Gas chromatography - mass spectrometry

GC-MS-NCI:

Gas chromatography - mass spectrometry - negative chemical ionisation

GGT:

γ-glutamyltransferase

LC-MS/MS:

Liquid chromatography - tandem mass spectrometry

LOD:

Limit of detection

LOQ:

Limit of quantitation

MCV:

Mean corpuscular volume

MPA:

Medical-psychological assessment

SPE:

Solid phase extraction

SPME:

Solid phase micro-extraction

WHO:

World Health Organization

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forensic and Clinical Toxicology, Labor Krone, Siemensstr. 40, 32105, Bad Salzuflen, Germany

    Ronald Agius

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  1. Ronald Agius
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Correspondence to Ronald Agius .

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Victor R. Preedy PhD DSc FRSPH FIBiol FRCPath

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© 2012 Wageningen Academic Publishers

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Agius, R. (2012). Ethyl glucuronide in hair and alcohol misuse. In: Preedy, V.R. (eds) Handbook of hair in health and disease. Human Health Handbooks no. 1, vol 1. Wageningen Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.3920/978-90-8686-728-8_13

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