Determination of ethanol in human fluids — II. Determination of ethanol in urine, breath and saliva

A review is presented to continue with a previous one in which the methods for determination of ethanol in urine, breath and saliva are surveyed.

Determination of ethanol in human fluids — I. Determination of ethanol in blood

A review of the methods for determination of ethanol in human fluids is presented. This first part of the review deals with the methods for determination of alcohol in blood, which have been divided into chemical, enzymatic, chromatographic and miscellaneous for clearer exposition and discussion.

Assessment of an automated enzymatic method for ethanol determination in microsamples of saliva

An automated enzymatic (ADH) method is described for ethanol determination in saliva. A 10 microliter sample volume is sufficient for analysis and by means of a Technicon Auto-Analyzer, sixty samples per hour may be run. It has been shown that ethanol is stable in saliva for at least 21 days when the samples are stored in a refrigerator at +4 degrees C, chemical preservatives were not required. The standard deviation of a single determination increased with increase in ethanol concentration in the sample. At a mean saliva ethanol concentration of 11.96 mmol/l, the standard deviation was +/- 0.169 mmol/l, corresponding to a coefficient of variation of 1.4%, implying a high precision. The recovery of alcohol added to saliva was 100.1% of the attributed concentration. Aliquots of the same saliva specimens were analysed using the enzymatic method (y) and by a head-space technique (x) for comparison. The regression equation was y = -0.067 + 1.002x (r = 0.993) inferring no systematic differences. The ADH method introduced has been used to determine the saliva ethanol concentration time course in man after alcohol ingestion.