Which blood test is which?

hanadr said:

Fergus!
I can't even check my sums at the moment, but am quite happy to admit I might have got them wrong. However the principle is right isn't it? And a millimole of glucose is 0.18g since a mole is 180g. at I millimole/l for 4 litres of blood that would be0.72g so for an ideal of 4.7 mmol/l the total will be 3.38g. So why I can't do sums at 1:00am I don't know. I don't have a calculator, so my piece of paperand biro must be to blame.

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I use the American numbers, 100 mg/dl works out to 1 g/litre x 5l gives around 5g glucose in your entire
bloodstream

brianb said:

The analyser we used to use was Huge, and VERY expensive obviously the technologyhas changed in the last 10 years or so, Portable HBA1C testers, wonder if i can get one from Boots :lol:

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There were OTC HbA1c kits available in the States, one was withdrawn from the market but I think others are still available.

Not 100% accurate, but then lab results can vary considerably from one to another depending on kit and calibration

This is probably what the fingerprick tests use here but I'm not sure if you can buy them OTC.

sugarless sue said:

That is such an excellent explanation Hana,thank you.

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Agreed.

Just one addition, the glycation process is reversible initially, which is why if you suffer from brief BG spikes your A1c might appear surprisingly low. This does not appear to be true for other tissues, so a low A1c made up of brief highs followed by major lows can have significantly worse effects with regard to complications than one which is chronically slightly above normal. One reason postprandial testing is important as well as the long term numbers from the A1c