Drug-abuse and control populations differentiated by a laboratory profile.

By multivariate analysis of nine laboratory variables, a discriminant function value has been derived that differentiated between a group of 106 drug abusers and a group of 100 normal controls.The variables were serum phosphorus, glucose, lactate dehydrogenase, aspartate aminotransferase, and hematocrit, total leukocyte count, polymorphonuclear leukocyte count, lymphocyte count, and monocyte count. The data demonstrate that the two populations can be distinguishedwith 4% error in the controlgroup and 14% error in the drug-abuse group. In addition,the individual variables for each group were compared by the t-test. The following were significantly different: serum calcium, phosphorus, blood urea nitrogen, cholesterol, albumin, total bilirubin, alkaline phosphatase, aspartate am inotransferase, and hemoglobin, hematocrit, leukocyte count, polymorphonuclear leukocyte count, stab cell count, and eosinophilcount.