Exclusion of trisialo-transferrin from carbohydrate-deficient transferrin measurement: advantage in patients with chronic liver disease?

Abstract

The newly developed carbohydrate deficient transferrin test (CDT-TRISIALO (-)) is of no advantage as compared to the established assay (CDT-TRISIALO (+)) when used in a patient population with liver disease. In that population, normal CDT-TRISIALO (-) helps to exclude recent alcohol consumption; this results from the high negative predictive value of a normal CDT-TRISIALO (-).

Differentiation of nonalcoholic from alcoholic steatohepatitis: are routine laboratory markers useful?

“…The performance of biomarkers in screening for alcoholism is controversial and most studies refer exclusively to the diagnosis of alcoholism itself and not the differentiation of ASH from NASH [17][18][19][20]. Furthermore, standard laboratory tests [mean corpuscular volume (MCV), carbohydrate deficient transferrin (CDT), gamma glutamyl transferase (GGT), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST)] may be helpful in monitoring alcohol dependence but they have low sensitivity for diagnosing the degree of alcohol consumption [21,22].…”