Glycated albumin indicates peripheral diabetic neuropathy

We investigated associations between serum levels of glycated albumin (GA) and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and the presence of diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM).

Between September 2009 and April 2015, we evaluated 314 patients with T1DM in the Endocrinology Department of Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University. We divided the patients into the DPN group (n = 72) and the non-DPN group (n = 242), on the basis of the presence of DPN.

The DPN group had significantly higher GA values than the non-DPN group. After univariate logistic regression, we selected several factors for further analysis: HbA1c, GA, duration of T1DM, body mass index, smoking, hypertension, and the presence of diabetic complications, including nephropathy, retinopathy, and cardiovascular disease. We performed a multivariate logistic regression analysis to examine the association between the presence of DPN and each of these variables. We identified GA, HbA1c, hypertension, smoking, retinopathy, and cardiovascular disease as independent variables for indicating the presence of DPN. Results of a receiver operating characteristic curve analysis revealed that the area under the curve of GA (0.771) was larger than that of HbA1c (0.629). We defined the cutoff value of GA as 23.5 % (sensitivity 0.764, specificity 0.661) and the cutoff value of HbA1c as 8.45 % (sensitivity 0.667, specificity 0.595) for predicting DPN in patients with T1DM.

GA may be a better indicative marker of DPN in patients with T1DM than HbA1c.