Аннотация:
Background and objectives. The main screening tools for diagnosing harmful alcohol use are various versions of the AUDIT test and, in particular, AUDIT-4. Despite its satisfactory reliability, sensitivity and specificity, in some cases the test underestimates the level of alcohol abuse. It seems important to investigate false negative test results in the population of Russian patients and to establish the main socio-demographic predictors of their occurrence.
Methods. The study was done on the basis of data collected in the course of a joint Norwegian-Russian observational, cross-sectional study of the University Hospital of Oslo and the Moscow Scientific and Practical Center for Addictios. The AUDIT-4 test and the blood alcohol biomarker phosphatidylethanol (PEth) were used as assessment tools. The study was conducted on acutely hospitalized somatic patients in the departments of general medicine, pulmonology, neurology and non-interventional cardiology. Statistical analysis was performed using the IBM SPSS Statistics 25.0 software.
Results. The main socio-demographic predictors of underestimating one’s level of alcohol consumption when passing the AUDIT-4 test in our study were the female gender and belonging to the 60–71 age group. Determination of one’s social status as inactive (disabled/unemployed), a state of mental distress, reporting the fact of drinking in the last 24 hours before hospitalization, on the contrary, were associated with a more correct assessment of one’s level of alcohol consumption.
Conclusion. It seems important to conduct studies aimed at elucidating the relationship between an adequate self-assessment of the level of alcohol consumption and a more correct establishment of gender-specific cutoffs for the AUDIT test, which determine harmful alcohol consumption. Valuable results may be obtained by studying the relationship between the severity of alcohol consumption and the correctness of its self-esteem.
Ключевые слова:
AUDIT-4, screening, socio-demographic predictors, false negative results, harmful alcohol use.