Objective: The aim of the study was to validate a French adaptation of the 5th version of the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) instrument in a Swiss sample of illicit drug users. Participants and Setting: The participants in the study were 54 French-speaking dependent patients, most of them with opiates as the drug of first choice. Procedure: Analyses of internal consistency (convergent and discriminant validity) and reliability, including measures of test-retest and inter-observer correlations, were conducted. Results: Besides good applicability of the test, the results on composite scores (CSs) indicate comparable results to those obtained in a sample of American opiate-dependent patients. Across the seven dimensions of the ASI, Cronbach’s α ranged from 0.42 to 0.76, test-retest correlations coefficients ranged from 0.48 to 0.98, while for CSs, inter-observer correlations ranged from 0.76 to 0.99. Conclusions: Despite several limitations, the French version of the ASI presents acceptable criteria of applicability, validity and reliability in a sample of drug-dependent patients.

Carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) measured by capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE), particularly asialotransferrin (Tf), is purported to better differentiate between excessive and moderate drinkers than does CDT measured by turbidimetric immunoassay (TIA) (1,2 ). The use of biological markers such as CDT is of particular interest for identifying young heavy drinkers because other clinical signs of heavy drinking are generally absent and heavy drinking is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in this age group (3, 4 ). Several authors have shown interest in the ability of CDT to identify nondependent heavy drinkers (5, 6 ); we therefore describe here the performance of CZE measurements of asialo-and disialo-Tf and TIA analysis of CDT in a large community sample of 19-year-old men, of whom 21% were heavy drinkers.From a sample of 1018 men attending a mandatory 1-day army recruitment process for all Swiss males at age 19 years, 1004 (98.6%) agreed to complete a research questionnaire. Of these, 581 young men (57.9%) consented to give blood for the measurement of asialo-Tf (CZE), disialo-Tf (CZE), and CDT (TIA). The Ethics Committee of the Lausanne University Medical School approved the study protocol. Volunteers were compensated for participation in the study.Volunters gave written informed consent and then completed an instrument entitled "Health and Lifestyle Questionnaire", which included questions assessing the typical quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption during the 12 months preceding the survey and the frequency of drunkenness over the last 30 days. One drink was defined as a 250-mL can or bottle of beer, a 120-mL glass of wine, or a 40-mL shot of liquor straight or in a mixed drink, and corresponded to ϳ12 g of pure ethanol.A study investigator was present during administration of the questionnaire to verify that participants answered all items. Serum samples were obtained by centrifugation of peripheral blood collected in 10-mL tubes. Samples were stored at Ϫ20°C before analysis.Total CDT was measured by anion-exchange chromatography and TIA with the Axis-Shield CDT (TIA) reagent set (7 ). To separate and measure Tf isoforms, we used a previously described and validated CZE method (8, 9 ) with the Ceofix CDT reagent set (Analis) on a Hewlett Packard (HP) 3D-CE instrument. The CZE conditions are described in Table 1 of the Data Supplement that accompanies the online version of this Technical Brief at http:// www.clinchem.org/content/vol51/issue6/. CZE electropherograms showing the serum Tf profiles for a heavy drinker before and after addition of anti-Tf polyclonal antibody to the serum are shown in Fig. 1 of the online Data Supplement, and CZE electropherograms showing the Tf profiles of a teetotaler and of 2 heavy drinkers are shown in Fig. 2 of the online Data Supplement.Peaks representing the different Tf isoforms were quantified as the amounts of the asialo-, disialo-, trisialo-, tetrasialo-, pentasialo-, and hexasialo-Tf (CZE) as a percentage of the total Tf content, in terms of va...

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