Glycated albumin as a diagnostic tool for diabetes in a general Japanese population

Diabetes mellitus is a major cause of cardiovascular, kidney, neurologic, and eye diseases, and may be preventable in some cases by lifestyle modification. Screening tests for diabetes mellitus include fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c). Our objective was to evaluate the utility of plasma glycated albumin (GA) in the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus.

A cross-sectional, community-based population study of 908 non-diabetic Japanese residents was conducted. Of these subjects, 176 with FPG value between 5.5 and 6.9mmol/l, and an HbA1c level of <6.5% received an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT).

The OGTT results were used for the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus using World Health Organization criteria. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses demonstrated that optimal threshold values for the diagnosis of diabetes in this population were 15.2% for GA and 5.9% for HbA1c, respectively. Using these cutoff levels, the sensitivity of GA at 62.1% for detecting diabetes was the same as that of HbA1c. However the specificity for GA for detecting diabetes was 61.9%, while for HbA1c it was higher at 66.7%.

Our results indicate that the measurement of glycated albumin may serve as a useful screening test for diabetes in a general Japanese population.