Diabetes is a widespread disease, involving about 7% of the entire world population. For this reason, many efforts have been devoted to the wide application of valid monitoring procedures and to the development of effective therapeutic approaches. Glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) is the pre-eminent factor for quantifying the risk of chronic complications in patients with diabetes. The Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT) and United Kingdom Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS), demonstrated conclusively that risks for complications in patients with diabetes are directly related to glycemic control, as measured by glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c). Accurate determination of HbA1c is an important issue for clinical laboratories and several factors may affect and lead to erroneous results. The main objective of this study is to show the different methods for glycated hemoglobin quantification and to discuss the most frequent problems of standardization glycated hemoglobin measurements.
Diabetes mellitus; Glycated hemoglobin; HbA1c; Chronic complications
