Benefit of Carbohydrate Deficient Transferrin to Detect Chronic Alcohol Abuse in the Elderly

Alcohol misuse affects 5 million people in France. Even though the elderly are also concerned by this pathology, there is not much information about chronic alcohol misuse of this population in particular. Biological markers like gamma-glutamyltranspeptidase (GGT), mean corpuscular volume (MCV) and carbohydrate deficient transferrin (CDT) are usually used to detect alcohol abuse. As a biological marker of alcohol misuse, the specificity of the CDT is known to be superior to the GGT as well. However, when it comes to the elderly, alcoholism diagnosis tools are based on research of younger populations. This study aims to evaluate the benefit of the CDT to detect chronic alcohol use in the elderly.