Biological correlates and detection of alcohol abuse and alcoholism

There has been a continuing interest in the biological correlates of alcohol abuse and alcoholism, in part because structured clinical interviews and questionnaire-derived data are vulnerable to deliberate falsification and/or denial. Although alcoholics often report a history of specific complaints and diseases, many clinicians do not think that early alcohol abuse can be detected by evaluating this self-reported data. Although the search for a single biological marker for alcoholism has so far proved unsuccessful, several investigators have recently demonstrated that combinations of tests are more likely to identify alcoholics than single tests. Ideally, one would like to have a technique that would define when an individual is consuming too much alcohol, such that for one person it may be 4 drinks per day and for another it may be 6 drinks per day. Moreover, a clinically useful technique would identify binge drinkers as well as regular consumers, and would not be influenced by acute intoxication, age, other drug use, nonalcoholism-related medical conditions, or pathophysiology accompanying the alcohol withdrawal syndrome.