Semi-automated carbohydrate-deficient transferrin in primary biliary cirrhosis: a pilot study.
Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is one of the few non-alcohol induced liver pathologies which causes false positive results in the evaluation of carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) for the diagnosis of alcohol misuse. This phenomenon has only been observed when using the CDTect assay (Pharmacia & Upjohn, Uppsala, Sweden). In this study, we evaluated CDT in female PBC patients (n = 14) by a new CDT procedure, the %CDT turbidimetric immunoassay (TIA, Axis Biochemicals, Oslo, Norway) using the isoelectric focusing/immunoblotting/laser densitometry (IEF/IB/LD, Specialty Laboratories, Santa Monica, CA, USA) procedure as the gold standard. One of the PBC patients tested CDT+ by IEF/IB/LD (cut-off >9 densitometry units, DU) and %CDT TIA (cut off >6%); one patient tested at the cut-off point of the IEF/IB/LD and another one tested at the cut-off point of the %CDT TIA. Thus, unlike CDTect, the %CDT TIA is a procedure that produces few false positives in PBC.
Bean
P
P
Millennium Strategies, Madison, WI 53717, USA.
Husa
A
A
Liegmann
K
K
Sundrehagen
E
E
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000097:blood*; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000097:blood; D005189:False Positive Reactions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008105:Liver Cirrhosis, Biliary / Q000097:blood*; D008875:Middle Aged; D014168:Transferrin / Q000031:analogs & derivatives* / Q000032:analysis
D015415:Biomarkers; D014168:Transferrin; C056759:carbohydrate-deficient transferrin