Medical - CDT test - Iron deficiency

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rufus

Established Member
Hi All , I have a medical coming up and have been doing a bit of research into the CDT test

I have found an article which links a lack of iron will increase your CDT (a false positive ) so I presume taking iron supplements will help with this, anybody else come across this to verify.

[h=1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10051465[/h]
main conclusion is "in conclusion, CDT serum levels are markedly affected by the patient's iron status, with iron overload reducing its sensitivity in alcohol abusers and iron deficiency its specificity in nonabusers. CDT can be considered a reliable marker of alcohol abuse only when iron stores are normal."
 
This has been raised before, and this was my response:

i have not said that taking iron tablets produces a false positive for drink drivers, the research that was linked to related to results from people who were suffering from Iron overload, which is a medical condition that causes the liver to store excessive amounts of iron. If you do not have that condition, you will not get ironoverload from taking too much iron.......
You should read up on the side effects of taking too much iron into the body. There is research that shows some unpleasant side effects from this.
i do not advocate believing newspaper articles as a definitive answer to medical queries, but the Daily Mail highlighted (and yes, maybe exaggerated) the problem with taking iron tablets unless you have anaemia a couple of days ago:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...0-MINUTES.html
 
Hi, thanks for your reply, I did see the "disscussion" regarding iron tablets which turned into a bit of a bun fight!!!

I am more concered with low levels of iron causing elevated CDT score a false positive for those tested.
 
Studies show that overall people with higher iron content have lower CDT but equally people move both ways. When that happens it often means that there is another factor at play.

The obvious one would seem to be that you are likely to be in better health if you have a diet high in iron, which is in protein and green leafy vegetables. If you have a healthy liver your CDT will tend to be lower. However, that is only really speculation.

There are a lot of myths around CDT. One of the ones I see quite often on here is milk thistle. It seems to be on the basis that it has potential benefits for liver health in alcoholics overall.

However, the irony is that, if it does work, it should actually increase CDT at least in the short term. That's because it performs something called iron chelation - making the transferrin that is tested shed it's iron rather than transport it.

CDTs are faulty transferrins that can't transport iron. Reducing the need for working transferrins would seem to be exactly what you don't want to do, because it would cause the CDT percentage to increase. That said, you would need a clinical trial to confirm the theory. I suspect milk thistle is so mild it would not cause a huge shift in either direction.

The only "cheat" I know is that CDT is more impacted by the number of days you drink rather than the amount you drink, so if you're going to cut one rather than abstain cut the number of days. Otherwise it is such a specific test I think it is very hard to artificially decrease it.
 
thanks for the info, as I said dont want to cheat test, I am concerned with below normal iron levels causing an increase in CDT and would taking iron supplement restore this back to normal
 
My best guess would be no, it would not have any effect positive or negative. CDT tests have been used for decades and, consequently, people looking to quickly lower CDT levels for decades. If iron supplements had an appreciable effect, beyond rough correlation, we would probably know.

In the longer term eating plenty of green vegetables, (which contain lots of iron anyway), citrus fruit, oily fish and tea and coffee will improve your liver and overall health, and lower your CDT to some extent, especially how quickly it rebounds back if you cut alcohol. The liver is such a complex organ it is much better to get them from natural sources.
 
Hi there just reading through this now ive had blood test results from medichecks that I have iron deficiency havnt felt well for a while put it down to this pandemic but reading about low levels if iron made me question my symptoms so I am now awaiting my cdt test results and worried sick now about the results any thoughts on this my alcohol intake is next to zero
 
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