CDT has become over the last decades an important alcohol biomarker with clinical and forensic applications. CDT results obtained by different methods may differ significantly from each other, making comparison with previous results or reference ranges error prone.

Obviously, physicians, forensic experts, lawyers, and patients prefer directly comparable results, irrespective of the method used. In 2005, the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC) founded a special working group aiming for the standardization of CDT measurement (WG-CDT).

In the following article, you can find the different steps of the WG starting from the definition of the measurand (serum disialotransferrin to total transferrin fraction expressed in % ), the selection and validation of a reference measurement procedure (RMP) with reference materials, and the reference interval.