et al., 2015). Because PEth has a half-life of ∼4 days, it can be assayed in the blood of heavy drinkers for up to 3 weeks after alcohol is consumed (Wurst et al., 2015). The sensitivity of PEth has been reported to be 99% (Aradottir et al., 2006), with several studies showing the assay to have perfect specificity, including in the presence of liver disease and hypertension. A major advantage of PEth is that, unlike many other candidate alcohol biomarkers, it does not appear to be “influenced by age, gender, other ingested substances or non alcohol-associated diseases” (Viel et al., 2012).
