Correct information of the actual alcohol intake is essential to assess the correlation with alcohol risk level consumption, mortality and morbidity (Nutt & Rehm, 2014), as well as a mean to monitor treatment effects.

Self-reported alcohol consumption suffers from limitations, such as recall (Stevens, Sokolovsky, Treloar Padovano, White, & Jackson, 2020) and expectation bias (de Bejczy et al., 2015, Stevens et al., 2020). Also, underreporting due to the lingering stigma of alcohol problems is common. The documentation of alcohol intake by interview or questionnaire is obstructed by discrepancies in the definitions of how many grams of alcohol constitutes a drink, bottle or unit.

Although a thorough anamnesis is the foundation for health evaluation, many conditions are diagnosed based on laboratory parameters and biometric testing. In several somatic diseases, an objective marker is used as proxy for screening and monitoring progress, for example P-glucose and HbA1C in diabetes, C-reactive Protein (CRP) and leukocytes for infection, well as blood pressure and blood lipids for cardiovascular disorders.

A reliable alcohol biomarker, with a known correlation to consumption level and a well-defined time range for which sampling, and analysis is relevant, would provide a valuable tool for identifying hazardous alcohol use and establishing consumption pattern, but also for monitoring progress of treatment and maintenance of abstinence, in clinical practice, research settings as well as in legal settings.

In the monitoring of alcohol consumption there are also possibilities to illuminate prognosis and severity of disease, and to substantiate the choice of treatment and personalize treatment.