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HbA1c Test Unreliable For Diagnosing Childhood Diabetes
Thu, 01 Dec 2011
Simple blood tests are not very effective for diagnosing diabetes in children, according to a new study published in the journal Diabetes Care .

In 2009, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) recommended that hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) tests be exclusively used for the diagnosis of diabetes in children. However, organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics did not endorse HbA1c as the exclusive measure.

Now researchers at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, say the results of their study show that the HbA1c test misses many cases of pediatric diabetes, and instead recommend the use of old standbys such as random glucose testing.

Joyce Lee, MD, MPH, lead author of the study and a pediatric endocrinologist at the hospital, said: "We found that hemoglobin A1c is not as reliable a test for identifying children with diabetes or children at high risk for diabetes compared with other tests in children. In fact, it failed to diagnose 2 out of 3 children participating in the study who truly did have diabetes ."

The study involved 254 overweight children and adolescents aged between 10 and 17 years. Only 1.2 per cent of the participants were diagnosed with diabetes, while 39 per cent had prediabetes .
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