
HbA1c, a diabetes marker for the past and for the future?
HbA1c, a diabetes marker for the past and for the future?
Ever since large clinical outcome studies in the 1990s demonstrated that tight blood glucose control, as measured by glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), is able to slow down the progress of diabetes-related complications, HbA1c is regarded as the gold standard to evaluate the clinical efficacy of new anti-diabetes compounds in clinical trials as well as the most important biomarker to guide the individual treatment of patients with diabetes. Furthermore, much more recently (since 2010), various diabetes societies and the World Health Organization (WHO) have accepted the use of HbA1c in screenings to diagnose diabetes, mainly type 2 diabetes (T2D). Despite its long-time status as gold standard parameter to assess diabetes therapy, many limitations of the HbA1c-value have been discussed in literature and experts in the field of diabetes are now saying that HbA1c alone is not enough and other parameters have to be considered for drug approval and treatment success. In this text the strengths and limitations of HbA1c and its role in future diabetes therapy are discussed.
Discovered by Iranian doctor Samuel Rahbar in 1968, HbA1c is a minor component of human haemoglobin formed by condensation of glucose to alpha- and beta-chains of the haemoglobin Hb A variant. In principle, the higher the blood glucose concentration, the more haemoglobin will be glycated. As the lifespan of red blood cells in which the haemoglobin is present is 120 days, HbA1c provides an estimate of the average glucose control in a human being over that p
Continue
reading