Carbohydrate Deficient Transferrin (CDT) at present is regarded as the most specific laboratory marker of chronic alcohol abuse. Unlike other biochemical parameters such as γ-GT or MCV, false positive results caused by non alcoholic liver diseases can be excluded.

A daily intake of more than 60 g ethanol (about 0.75 l wine) over a period of two weeks elevates CDT values significantly. After approx. 2 weeks of alcohol abstention the levels normalise again. This makes CDT an excellent parameter for controlling withdrawal treatment, forensic judgements or in occupational medicine.

This Chromsystems reagent kit is designed for the very fast and reliable determination of CDT in serum using a ternary HPLC gradient systems with UV detector. The results are calculated as area percent of total transferrin, and, therefore, are not affected by variations of the total transferrin concentration. The optimised chromatographic separation of the transferrin isoforms also ensures the detection of genetic variants of transferrin.