A1C Blood Test OK for Diabetes Diagnosis

Dec. 29, 2009 -- The American Diabetes Association (ADA) is recommending
that a simple blood test currently used to assess whether diabetes is under
control also be used to diagnose the disease.
The blood test -- known as the A1C test -- has several important advantages
over traditional blood glucose testing.
Patients do not need to fast before the test is given, and it is far less
likely to identify clinically irrelevant fluctuations in blood sugar because it
measures average blood glucose levels over several months.
The new guidelines do not call for replacing traditional screening with the
A1C test.
It is believed that around 6 million Americans have diabetes but don't know
it, and another 57 million have prediabetes.
The A1C test may help identify a large number of people in both of these
groups, former ADA president for medicine and science John Buse, MD, PhD, tells
WebMD.
Buse, who is chief of endocrinology at the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill, helped draft the new ADA diabetes care guidelines, which were made
public today.
"We now know that early diagnosis and treatment can have a huge impact on
outcomes by preventing the complications commonly seen when diabetes is not
well controlled," he says. "Our hope is that people with early or prediabetes
who might otherwise not be tested would have the A1C test."



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