A1C Diagnosis Of Diabetes

The A1C diagnosis of diabetes was introduced in July 2009, whereby international expert committee released a report that brought in the case for applying the hemoglobin A1C assay to diagnose type 2 diabetes. The Expert Committee hoped that these report will function as a stimulus to the international community and professional organizations to study the use of the A1C assay for the diagnosis of diabetes.

Based on the committee, hemoglobin A1c values deviate less than fasting plasma glucose, or FPG, levels, and A1c measurement has technological advantages compared with glucose testing. Additionally, both the FPG test and the less commonly used oral glucose tolerance test, or OGTT, require patients to fast, the A1c test does not.

A1C, also called hemoglobin A1c, and occasionally abbreviated HbA1c, evaluates the amount of glucose that's abstracted to hemoglobin in red blood cells, and generates an estimate of how the blood glucose has been acting in the past 2 to 3 months.

Committee members concluded that applying an A1c cut-point of 6.5 percent or higher to lay down the diagnosis of diabetes was justifiable. According to the committee report, people with an A1c level of at least 6 percent but less than 6.5 percent are likely at high risk for developing diabetes. The committee also stated that A1c values are more static after collection compared with the other tests.

In spite of its advantages, A1c examination hasn't get widely recognized as a diagnostic tool because of its lack of assay standardization. Though expert panels debated this option in 1997 and again in 2003, they recommended against it. The primary obstruction was a lack of standardization of the assay, but that is no longer the case now. In fact, A1C is better standardized than other measurements of glucose. Other advantages of A1C include the fact that it is a more expert indication of overall glycemic exposure over time and that there is substantially less day-to-day variability. From a practical point of view, A1C is a practically easier to measure as it does not involve fasting or timed samplings.

Using the A1C to diagnose diabetes could become a recommended way to make the diagnosis. An International expert committee is urging the A1C assay as the new test for the diagnosis of diabetes. The experts notice that the A1C assay is an accurate, accurate measure of chronic glucose levels and correlates well with the risk of diabetes complications, and has numerous advantages over laboratory measures of glucose, especially that it does not need to be collected fasting.