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The relationship between the concentrations of plasma cholesterol, high-density-lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, triglycerides and uric acid has been studied in relation to alcohol consumption in men attending a health-screening centre. Although it has been suggested that these metabolites are associated with each other by environmental factors, including ethanol consumption, the only correlation we have found between the variables which is statistically significantly related to alcohol consumption is that between total cholesterol and uric acid. A comparison of these correlations with epidemiological data suggests that assessment of cardiovascular risk is best done by using plasma cholesterol and uric acid levels, corrected for alcohol consumption. The correlation between HDL-cholesterol and the remaining fractions of plasma cholesterol is constant over all levels of alcohol consumption, and therefore the division of cholesterol between these fractions is apparently independent of both alcohol consumption and cholesterol synthesis.

Several clinical laboratory tests correlate with alcohol consumption, for example, the plasma activities of gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST), the concentrations of triglycerides (TG) and uric acid (UA) and the erythrocyte mean corpuscular volume (MCV). The correlations of these test results with each other have been studied in a population of men attending a multiphasic health-screening centre. The patterns of correlation were of two types: those between the pairs of variables GGT/TG, GGT/UA, TG/AST, and TG/UA were all unchanged as the level of alcohol consumption increased; the pairs of variables GGT/MCV, UA/AST, AST/MCV, UA/MCV, and GGT/AST all became more highly correlated as the level of alcohol consumption increased.