The characteristics of the changes in the blood enzyme activity of patients with acute alcoholic psychoses

: The serum activity of alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, glutamate dehydrogenase, gamma-glutamyl transferase and creatinine kinase was studied in 81 patients with chronic alcoholism and 31 patients with alcoholic psychoses. Eighty-one healthy apparently non-drinkers served as a control group. It is concluded that when acute alcoholic psychoses develop, patients with chronic alcoholism display a simultaneous increase in the activity of enzymes releasing from damaged muscular and hepatic tissues. This makes the application of a number of the diagnostic criteria developed in classical clinical enzymology impossible. The phenomenon of concurrent increases in the activity of creatine kinase, aspartate aminotransferase and glutamate dehydrogenase by 4 times or more has been proposed to be used as a criteria for identifying alcoholic psychosis in alcoholics.