Journal article
A Comparison of the Predictive Power of DNA Methylation with Carbohydrate Deficient Transferrin for Heavy Alcohol Consumption
Epigenetics, Vol.16(9), pp.969-979
2021
DOI: 10.1080/15592294.2020.1834918
PMCID: PMC8451525
PMID: 33100127
Abstract
Currently, the most commonly used biomarker of alcohol consumption patterns is carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT). However, the CDT has limited sensitivity and requires the use of blood. Recently, we have shown that digital DNA methylation techniques can both sensitively and specifically detect heavy alcohol consumption (HAC) using DNA from blood or saliva. In order to better understand the relative performance characteristics of these two tests, we compared an Alcohol T-Score (ATS) derived from our prior study and serum CDT levels in 313 (182 controls and 131 HAC cases) subjects discordant for HAC. Overall, the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) area under the curve (AUC) analyses showed that DNA methylation predicted HAC status better than CDT with AUCs of 0.96 and 0.87, respectively (p < 0.0001). The performance of the CDT was affected by gender while the ATS was not, while both were affected by age. We conclude that DNA methylation is a promising method for quantifying HAC and that further studies to better refine its strengths and limitations are in order.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- A Comparison of the Predictive Power of DNA Methylation with Carbohydrate Deficient Transferrin for Heavy Alcohol Consumption
- Creators
- Shelly Miller - Behavioral Diagnostics LLCJames A. Mills - University of IowaJeffrey Long - University of IowaRobert Philibert - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Epigenetics, Vol.16(9), pp.969-979
- Publisher
- Taylor & Francis
- DOI
- 10.1080/15592294.2020.1834918
- PMID
- 33100127
- PMCID
- PMC8451525
- ISSN
- 1559-2294
- eISSN
- 1559-2308
- Grant note
- name: supported, award: R44AA022041
- Language
- English
- Electronic publication date
- 10/26/2020
- Date published
- 2021
- Academic Unit
- Roy J. Carver Department of Biomedical Engineering; Psychiatry; Iowa Neuroscience Institute; Biostatistics
- Record Identifier
- 9984070257902771
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