The influence of experimental alcohol load and alcohol intoxication on S100B concentrations

Because nearly 50% of patients with mild head trauma are alcohol intoxicated, it often remains unclear if the neurological deficits are due to alcohol intoxication or to intracerebral damage. To avoid unnecessary head computed tomography investigations in patients with mild head trauma, S100B is currently used as an exclusion marker for cellular brain damage. However, whether S100B levels are influenced by alcohol itself remains to be unclear. Therefore, we performed a case-control study of nontraumatized, alcohol-intoxicated patients to prove if serum S100B is altered by alcohol uptake. Furthermore, we investigated if alcohol infusions combined with an initial oral alcohol load up to a blood alcohol steady state of 100 mg/dL affected S100B levels in healthy volunteers (n = 12). In this standardized experimental procedure, no significant increase in S100B levels could be found. In contrast, compared with the control group (n = 60 sober and healthy), the ethyl alcohol-intoxicated patients (n = 61; mean ethyl alcohol, 251 [SD, 87] mg/dL) had higher S100B concentrations (0.193 [SD, 0.45] vs. 0.063 [SD, 0.059] μg/L; P < 0.001), and 39% of them had levels greater than the pathologic cutoff at greater than 0.104 μg/L. However, no significant correlation was found between ethyl alcohol concentrations and S100B within the respective group. Our clinical data suggest that blood alcohol concentrations far in excess of 100 mg/dL are associated with increased S100B levels in alcohol-intoxicated patients.