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Updated: Jun 14, 2026
Chronic Intermittent Ethanol Vapor Exposure Paired with Two-Bottle Choice to Model Alcohol Use Disorder
Published on: June 23, 2023
Classification of alcohol abuse by plasma protein biomarkers
Willard M Freeman1, Anna C Salzberg, Steven W Gonzales
1Department of Pharmacology, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA.
Background:
Biochemical diagnostics of ethanol intake would improve alcohol abuse treatment and have applications in clinical trial and public safety settings. Self-reporting of alcohol use has clinical utility but lacks the desired reliability. Previously, proposed single-analyte biochemical tests of alcohol intake suffer from low sensitivity and specificity or examine only acute drinking and have therefore seen limited clinical use.
Methods:
To address this unmet need, plasma protein biomarker discovery and validation were performed with an alcohol self-administering nonhuman primate model system to develop a diagnostic that accurately classifies subjects into nondrinking, nonabusive drinking, and abusive drinking categories.
Results:
A 17-plasma protein panel was determined that correctly classifies abusive drinking with 100% sensitivity and also differentiates any level of drinking from alcohol abstinence with 88% accuracy.
Conclusions:
The biomarker panel reflects changes in multiple organ systems and suggests robust changes in the plasma proteome with drinking that might serve as a sensitive and specific diagnostic test. The specific plasma proteins altered with alcohol self-administration might represent indicators of alcohol-induced stress on a variety of organ systems.
