title: Difficulties in measuring human blood acetaldehyde concentrations during ethanol intoxication.
abstract: The determination of human blood acetaldehyde (AcH) concentrations is complicated by two artefactual reactions, one resulting in the disappearance of AcH prior to deproteinization of the blood and the other resulting in the formation of AcH during deproteinization. The AcH formation increases with increasing ethanol concentration and decreases with increasing blood dilution, while the rapid AcH disappearance is initiated at the start of the blood collection. The magnitudes of these artefactual reactions are of such an order that a re-evaluation of previous reports on human blood AcH levels is needed. To circumvent these difficulties we suggest that blood should be deproteinized immediately (less than 5s) after arterial or venous puncture and corrections for AcH formation should be determined under the experimental conditions employed. The first data available on human blood AcH concentrations during ethanol intoxication, determined with such methods (20 to 40 micro M AcH after 1 g/kg ethanol), revealed no differences between the estimated in vivo arterial and venous AcH concentrations.
mesh_terms: D000079:Acetaldehyde / Q000097:blood*; D000435:Alcoholic Intoxication / Q000097:blood*; D001798:Blood Proteins; D001800:Blood Specimen Collection; D000431:Ethanol / Q000097:blood; D006801:Humans; D007700:Kinetics; D008722:Methods; D014680:Veins
chemical_list: D001798:Blood Proteins; D000431:Ethanol; D000079:Acetaldehyde