Alcohol (chemical name: ethanol) is the most abused drug in western society. In Britain alone, there are 5 million cases of hospital accident and emergency visits that are alcohol related every year. Many countries have developed a binge drinking culture and because alcohol is widely available in Westernised countries, each one has a significant proportion of the population that is addicted to alcohol.

It has long been acknowledged by the medical profession that a reliable test for alcohol consumption is required. Currently, there exist a number of alcohol tests but each one has severe limitations. Long-term alcohol abuse affects the liver and so there are various liver function tests to determine whether alcohol abusers have an affected liver. However a positive result means the liver is already affected and this test is therefore conducted too late in the patient’s history. By the time such tests register positive results, it may be too late to begin preventive treatment.

Breath alcohol tests exist in many forms but alcohol is lost from breath relatively quickly and so this is not a reliable test when conducted more than a few hours after the last drinking session.

There is a biological marker in blood, called carbohydrate deficient transferrin which increases in quantity due to compromises in the breakdown of glucose in the presence of ethanol. This marker is present in people who have an alcohol dependence, and when they abstain it deteriorates slowly over several weeks. However, this marker is of limited use medically especially when someone is trying to give up alcohol or they have intermittent alcohol drinking relapses, which often happens in alcoholism.

Seeing that alcohol is a big social problem, and realizing that alcohol may change the chemistry of some of the fundamental lipids in the body, the inventor has researched and isolated a group of lipids that change fundamentally in proportion to the quantity of ethanol that is present in the body over a period of time.

Alcohol has a simple molecular structure and it leaves the body quite quickly. Alcohol is broken down in several ways depending on the genetic and physiological make up of the person, and their ethnic background. Our research into the metabolism has shown us that there are five basic biotypes.