Diagnostic Usefulness of Disialotransferrin as an Indicator of Binge Drinking in Children and Adolescents

Abstract

Background/Objective: The aim of the study was to evaluate the diagnostic usefulness of changes in transferrin isoforms, especially disialo-Tf, in identifying binge drinking children and adolescents admitted to hospital emergency. Methods: The study group consisted of 122 ambulatory children and adolescents below 18 years of age and 30 healthy subjects. From the group of drinkers, those with acute alcohol intoxication (AAI) were identified (ICD-11, code F10.0). The isoforms of transferrin were separated by capillary electrophoresis into five major fractions: asialo-Tf, disialo-Tf, trisialo-Tf, tetrasialo-Tf, and pentasialo-Tf. The differences between binge drinking youth and nondrinking subjects were evaluated by Mann–Whitney U-test. Results: In the total study group and in both genders, the concentration of disialo-Tf was significantly higher in the binge drinkers compared to the nondrinking youth (p = 0.006). With respect to the gender, the level of disialo-Tf was significantly higher in binge drinking than nondrinking girls (p = 0.028) and the value of trisialo-Tf was lower in binge drinking than nondrinking boys (p = 0.011). In the AAI subgroup, the concentrations of disialo-Tf and tetrasialo-Tf were significantly higher in comparison to nondrinking subjects (p = 0.002, p = 0.039, respectively). There were no significant correlations between the BAC and the transferrin isoforms in the total group and the AAI subgroup. The disialo-Tf reached the highest diagnostic power (AUC = 0.718) in identifying binge drinkers at diagnostic specificity and sensitivity of 86.7% and 51.6%, respectively (at cut-off 0.70), in the total group and it was growing up to AUC = 0.761 with the diagnostic sensitivity of 60% in the AAI subgroup. Conclusions: The disialo-Tf might be a useful biomarker to identify binge drinking children and adolescents.