Relations between reported alcohol consumption and certain biological variables in an "unselected" population.

We looked for variables that could serve as indexes of alcohol consumption. We tested iron, gamma-glutamyltransferase, mean erythrocyte volume, mean erythrocyte hemoglobin concentration, urea, uric acid, and alanine aminotransferase, among others, in an unselected population of men, and by principal components analysis we singled out the correlation between the two enzymes and the two hematologic values. On the other hand, calculation of the coefficients of correlation between the total amount of alcohol consumed and the 10 variables studied, together with multiple regression analysis, showed that the three variables that correlated most significantly with alcohol consumption were gamma-glutamyltransferase, mean erythrocyte volume, and the use of tobacco. Critical evaluation of the results leads us to conclude that still more discriminative biological indices msut be sought and that the use of psychosocial data is also desirable.