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COMPARISON OF ENZYME IMMUNOASSAY AND GAS CHROMATOGRAPHY METHOD FOR DETERMINATION OF WHOLE BLOOD AND URINE ALCOHOL LEVELS

An analysis of ethanol in blood and urine is routinely undertaken in clinical and forensic toxicology laboratories, particularly when connected with drinking and driving legislation. By far the most popular methof for determining ethanol is gas chromatography (GC). GC has the advantage of being able to separate ethanol from other alcohols. Enzymatic methods have the adventage that they can be automated and can be added to a panel of other blood chemistry tests. Clinical toxicology alcohol tests are carried out in plasma or serum, where alcohol concentration is greater than in whole blood. Precipitation step enable determination of whole blood alcohol by enzymatic method. The objective was to estimate enzymatic method specificity and compare results obtained by enzymatic method with GC. We measured ethanol concentration in 45 samples: 25 whole blood and 20 urine specimen by GC (Perkin Elmer) and enzyme immunoassay (EIA) (Viva, Siemens). Correlations between parameters were assessed using the Pearson correlation coefficient. P- value<0.0001 was considered to be stasistically significant. Correlation coefficient was 0.9994 for urine samples with CI 0.9985 to 0.9998 and 0.9980 for whole blood samples with CI 0.9955 to 0.9991. EIA specificity was tested by addition of different levels of methanol, acetaldehyde, isopropanol, acetone and n- butanol in alcohol-free urine. Level of this tested compounds exceed toxic concentrations. Interferences with analyzed compounds are not considered to be clinically significant. Obtained results suggest that EIA is acceptable method for ethanol in both clinical and torensic toxicology.

ethanol ; gas chromatography ; enzyme immunoassay

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