title: The Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test for Consumption (AUDIT-C) is more useful than pre-existing laboratory tests for predicting hazardous drinking: a cross-sectional study.
abstract: It is important to screen for alcohol consumption and drinking customs in a standardized manner. The aim of this study was 1) to investigate whether the AUDIT score is useful for predicting hazardous drinking using optimal cutoff scores and 2) to use multivariate analysis to evaluate whether the AUDIT score was more useful than pre-existing laboratory tests for predicting hazardous drinking.
  
  
  
  A cross-sectional study using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) was conducted in 334 outpatients who consulted our internal medicine department. The patients completed self-reported questionnaires and underwent a diagnostic interview, physical examination, and laboratory testing.
  
  
  
  Forty (23 %) male patients reported daily alcohol consumption ≥ 40 g, and 16 (10 %) female patients reported consumption ≥ 20 g. The optimal cutoff values of hazardous drinking were calculated using a 10-fold cross validation, resulting in an optimal AUDIT score cutoff of 8.2, with a sensitivity of 95.5 %, specificity of 87.0 %, false positive rate of 13.0 %, false negative rate of 4.5 %, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.97. Multivariate analysis revealed that the most popular short version of the AUDIT consisting solely of its three consumption items (AUDIT-C) and patient sex were significantly associated with hazardous drinking. The aspartate transaminase (AST)/alanine transaminase (ALT) ratio and mean corpuscular volume (MCV) were weakly significant.
  
  
  
  This study showed that the AUDIT score and particularly the AUDIT-C score were more useful than the AST/ALT ratio and MCV for predicting hazardous drinking.
authors.affiliation: Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Osaka City Juso Hospital, Nonaka-kita, Yodogawa, Osaka, 532-0034, Japan. fujiirola@yahoo.co.jp.
authors.forename: Hideki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Fujii
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiological Technology, Hokkaido University of Science, Maeda, Teine, Sapporo, Hokkaido, 006-8585, Japan.
authors.forename: Naoki
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Nishimoto
authors.affiliation: Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Osaka City Juso Hospital, Nonaka-kita, Yodogawa, Osaka, 532-0034, Japan.
authors.forename: Seiko
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yamaguchi
authors.affiliation: Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Osaka City Juso Hospital, Nonaka-kita, Yodogawa, Osaka, 532-0034, Japan.
authors.forename: Osamu
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Kurai
authors.affiliation: Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Osaka City Juso Hospital, Nonaka-kita, Yodogawa, Osaka, 532-0034, Japan.
authors.forename: Masato
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Miyano
authors.affiliation: Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Osaka City Juso Hospital, Nonaka-kita, Yodogawa, Osaka, 532-0034, Japan.
authors.forename: Wataru
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Ueda
authors.affiliation: Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Osaka City Juso Hospital, Nonaka-kita, Yodogawa, Osaka, 532-0034, Japan.
authors.forename: Hiroko
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Oba
authors.affiliation: Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Osaka City Juso Hospital, Nonaka-kita, Yodogawa, Osaka, 532-0034, Japan.
authors.forename: Tetsuya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Aoki
authors.affiliation: Department of Hepatology, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka City University, Abeno, Osaka, 545-8585, Japan.
authors.forename: Norifumi
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kawada
authors.affiliation: Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Osaka City Juso Hospital, Nonaka-kita, Yodogawa, Osaka, 532-0034, Japan.
authors.forename: Kiyotaka
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Okawa
mesh_terms: D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000453:epidemiology*; D019973:Alcohol-Related Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010045:Outpatients; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012372:ROC Curve; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test; Hazardous drinking; Screening