Laboratory tests vary widely in their utility and each test has unique advantages and disadvantages. For the detection of ethanol use and abuse, a variety of direct and indirect markers are available. Alcohol biomarkers provide objective measures for numerous areas of testing including clinical trials, alcohol abuse, postmortem assessment, and drugs of abuse screening. Because the utility of alcohol biomarkers vary depending on the context in which the results will be used, knowing the analogous distribution of results is of value. Herein we report distributions of ethanol in blood, phosphatidylethanol in blood, ethyl glucuronide in urine, and ethyl sulfate in urine for results reported in the last twelve months by our laboratory. Positivity rates were higher for directed analyses when compared to broad screening or panel tests with the highest overall positivity for ethyl glucuronide and ethyl sulfate. The distribution of results for ethyl glucuronide and ethyl sulfate were higher in clinical testing scenarios compared to forensic and a significant correlation between ethyl glucuronide and ethyl sulfate was found consistent with previous reports. Phosphatidylethanol was rarely ordered for forensic use while distributions between routine clinical and clinical trial use were similar. Approximately 21% of all phosphatidylethanol results were in the moderate to chronic alcohol use category. These results provide a summary of four commonly used direct markers for alcohol use with positivity rates and overall quantitative distributions. These data supply insights broken out by various disciplines where applicable providing a concise comparison of results for these markers.

实验室测试的实用性差异很大，每种测试都有独特的优点和缺点。为了检测乙醇的使用和滥用，可以使用多种直接和间接标记物。酒精生物标志物为众多测试领域提供客观测量，包括临床试验、酒精滥用、尸检评估和滥用药物筛查。由于酒精生物标志物的效用取决于结果使用的环境，因此了解结果的类似分布是有价值的。在此，我们报告了我们实验室过去 12 个月报告的结果中血液中乙醇、血液中磷脂酰乙醇、尿液中乙基葡萄糖醛酸和尿液中硫酸乙酯的分布。与广泛筛选或小组测试相比，定向分析的阳性率更高，乙基葡萄糖醛酸苷和硫酸乙酯的总体阳性率最高。与法医检测相比，乙基葡萄糖醛酸苷和硫酸乙酯的结果分布在临床测试场景中更高，并且发现乙基葡萄糖醛酸苷和硫酸乙酯之间存在显着相关性，这与之前的报告一致。磷脂酰乙醇很少用于法医用途，而常规临床和临床试验使用之间的分布相似。所有磷脂酰乙醇结果中大约 21% 属于中度至慢性饮酒类别。这些结果总结了四种常用的饮酒直接标志物以及阳性率和总体定量分布。这些数据提供了按适用的各个学科细分的见解，为这些标记的结果提供了简明的比较。