and analysis of saliva, and numerous applications in pharmacokinetic
studies, as well as in clinical medicine and research,
were surveyed.
The analysis of drugs of abuse in saliva was the subject of a
review article in this journal (6), but the usefulness of saliva as
a biological specimen for analysis of ethanol was not mentioned.
Ethanol has a low molecular weight, is highly soluble
in water, and does not bind to plasma proteins, making it a suitable
drug for analysis in saliva. Indeed, the concentrations of
ethanol reaching saliva should reflect those in the water fraction
of whole blood (7). Because the ratio of blood flow to
tissue mass of the salivary gland is so large, the concentration
of alcohol entering saliva should reflect the concentration in
the arterial blood (8).
New innovations and technology for analyzing ethanol in
saliva have emerged in response to the demands for alcohol
testing in the workplace (9-11). The QED (quantitative ethanol
detector) is a good example of a noninvasive device for onthe-
spot analysis of salivary alcohol concentrations, and several
short reports of its performance have appeared (12-14). This
paper expands on these earlier studies and presents the results
of laboratory tests designed to evaluate the accuracy, precision,
and selectivity of the QED device under in vitro and in
vivo conditions.