Reply to Crunelleet al.about the Article ‘A Comparison Between Serum Carbohydrate-Deficient Transferrin and Hair Ethyl Glucuronide in Detecting Chronic Alcohol Consumption in Routine’

To the Editor:We would like to thank Crunelle and colleagues for the interest shown in our work and for giving us the possibility to better explain our results (Bianchi et al. , 2015).Crunelle is correct in mentioning that the SoHT has proposed two distinct cut-offs to be used in the assessment of alcohol consumption, a 7 pg/mg (to distinguish abstinence from social drinking) and a 30 pg/mg cut-off (to assess excess chronic alcohol intake >60 g per day) (SoTH Guideline on EtG, Cooper et al. , 2012). However, in our study, both serum carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) and hair ethyl glucuronide (EtG) were used to detect chronic alcohol consumption or abuse, as stated in the title. Indeed, at least in …