Anaemia and HbA1c?

A bit late replying to this one. I was diagnosed type 2 just over a year ago, low BMI, high blood sugar out of the blue, not taking any medication for diabetes but recently had some blood tests that need a repeat test and I suspect are due to low iron. Will be interesting to see how this works out. Will let you know in a few weeks!

LittleGreyCat said:

Following on from my other post about anaemia, does anyone know how a low red blood cell count can skew an HbA1c?

Trying to get my head around it.

Also tracking back, the estimated HbA1c from my Freestyle Libre is 5.9% and my latest result is 7.0%.

Edit:
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/news/201...ted-through-hba1c-due-to-anemia-97409751.html
Anaemia can cause a higher calculated HbA1c.
Investigating further.

Click to expand...

I know @Bluetit1802 did a lot of research into HbA1c and results that don’t tally with blood glucose testing, as did @Mbaker

Try as I might I haven’t been able to find the helpful links that Bluetit gave me (it was at least a couple of years ago). However, while I haven’t read them, but have found these studies:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7336595/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3933917/

Editing to say, just found this post in which Bluetit lists many helpful links: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/th...e-with-some-chat.22272/page-1891#post-1945168

RBC can skew the hematocrit value, and most home meters are sensitive to this affecting their accuracy The HbA1c is not so affected,

I use two meters and one of them seems that it may be skewed because my hematocrit is low. Since the HbA1c is an assayed value done on venous blood, I would consider it to be more accurate than home testing.

Goonergal said:

I know @Bluetit1802 did a lot of research into HbA1c and results that don’t tally with blood glucose testing, as did @Mbaker

Try as I might I haven’t been able to find the helpful links that Bluetit gave me (it was at least a couple of years ago). However, while I haven’t read them, but have found these studies:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7336595/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3933917/

Editing to say, just found this post in which Bluetit lists many helpful links: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/th...e-with-some-chat.22272/page-1891#post-1945168

Click to expand...

Oh I pushed this to my limit:

• 6 different blood glucose monitors (a couple perfectly in sync with professional units used by my surgery)
• Countless readings per day
• Freestyle Libre - some estimates for HbA1c at 22
• A1cNow+ - many results between 30 and 31 (my wife non-diabetic read a 32 when I read 31)

At best I was getting 3.8 mmol/L fasting bg, with a normal of 4.3 / 4.4, adhoc of around 4.7 (just tested 15:56 at 5.0, on no exercise as went to City today, so on the train). What was strange is that despite dropping between 0.8 and 1 point for fbg my HbA1c stayed the same at around 38-39.
Post postprandial never above 6.0, apart from an Apple test at 6.2.

I used the Libres many times and noticed a improvement on these as well in terms of lower averages and no spiking (which I thought I might have been missing with regular tests to push up the A1c). Still no budge in the HbA1c read at Ipswich hospital. I did private tests on 2 different assays, one read 39 and other 35.5. I then read that ethic groups can get differing readings to say Europeans, so now I just focus on occasional fbg, random tests and post postprandial from time to time.

Interesting topic. Please carry on researching and reporting back here