HbA1c and plasma glucose level

[861]

Hi all, I've received some blood test results on the NHS app.

My HbA1c result was 33
Plasma glucose level was 6.6

I had the test at around 9am and I had only had water to drink and hadnt eaten since the evening before. Should I be worried about the plasma glucose result?

I've had around 6 HbA1c tests in the past 3 years. The highest result was 34. The reason for so many tests is because I had symptoms which turned out to be a b12 deficiency so I carried on with the HbA1c tests to keep an eye on my levels. This is the first plasmas glucose level test that I've done.

Thanks for reading.

 

[KennyA]

Hi all, I've received some blood test results on the NHS app.

My HbA1c result was 33
Plasma glucose level was 6.6

I had the test at around 9am and I had only had water to drink and hadnt eaten since the evening before. Should I be worried about the plasma glucose result?

I've had around 6 HbA1c tests in the past 3 years. The highest result was 34. The reason for so many tests is because I had symptoms which turned out to be a b12 deficiency so I carried on with the HbA1c tests to keep an eye on my levels. This is the first plasmas glucose level test that I've done.

Thanks for reading.

Hi

I have never had a plasma glucose test so far as i know, so this isn't based on any personal experience. Instead I had a look in Bilous and Donnelly's Handbook of Diabetes and they say that for a diagnosis of diabetes following a plasma glucose test you'd need one of the following:

-a random plasma glucose level of equal to or more than 11.1mmol/l, if you have typical symptoms of diabetes:
-a fasting plasma glucose level of equal to or more than 7.0 mmol/l (which seems to be the one most relevant to your test)
-a plasma glucose level of equal to or more than 11.1mmol/l, two hours after a 75g load of oral glucose (the oral glucose tolerance test)

So your result wouldn't appear to indicate diabetes, which backs up and confirms what the (quite low) HbA1c result indicated. You have lower blood glucose than the vast majority of the non-diabetic population - see the graph.

The 6.6 result seems to be in the range for what B&D call "impaired fasting glycaemia" which if I understand them correctly seems to imply a state that might get worse, or might get better. They say that a small proportion of patients with IFG (5-10%) will go on to develop diabetes, which means that 90-95% won't. My guess would be that with your very low HbA1c you probably have less to worry about on this score.

I don't know enough about the effects of B12 deficiency to speculate about whether that might have its own impact. Have you asked your doc to explain the results?