Study supports importance of regular screening for those at risk from diabetes

A new study from Japan has claimed that increasing HbA1c levels and fasting plasma glucose are able to predict the onset of type 2 diabetes for up to a year before it develops.
The research, which was published online in the journal Diabetes Care, involved the monitoring of 1,722 adults aged between 26 and 80 who didn’t have diabetes, measuring their fasting plasma glucose and HbA1c every year for an average of nearly a decade. In that time, 193 of the participants were diagnosed with diabetes, with each having an average HbA1c level of more than 38mmol/mol (5.6%) in each year prior to diagnosis.
It was also reported that mean blood glucose and HbA1c levels were substantially greater for the diabetes patients as opposed to the non-diabetics during the monitoring period, with differences of 1.02 mmol/L and 18 mmol/mol (0.471%) higher, respectively.
For the whole study group, rises in HbA1c of 20 mmol/mol (0.3%) each year as well as fasting plasma glucose of 0.63 mmol/L/year was found to predict a diagnosis of diabetes.
However, researcher Hirohito Sone, a diabetologist at the University of Tsukuba Institute of Clinical Medicine in Tsukuba, Japa, did admit “To confirm our findings, further investigations are needed that include participants of other ethnicities.”