Glycated albumin is not applicable to differentiate gestational diabetes mellitus in Chinese pregnant women.

PURPOSE: Some studies have suggested that Glycated albumin (GA) may represent a useful biomarker in pregnant women for diagnosing and monitoring gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). However, whether GA is a sufficiently accurate marker to screen GDM in a general population of pregnant women remains unclear. The current study aimed to investigate the role of GA in screening GDM in Chinese pregnant women.

METHODS

In this study, 298 Chinese women between 24-28 weeks of gestation were included. A total number of 247 women with normal glucose tolerance and 51 with GDM were identified according to the glucose levels detection. GA concentrations (GA%) were measured using three different kits, all of which utilized the ketoamine oxidase method for analysis.

RESULTS

Firstly, we found the GA% levels of the GDM group were significantly higher than those of healthy control. Specifically, the GA% level of the healthy control using Lucica, Maccura, Gcell was respectively 12.86 ± 0.8458, 13.40 ± 0.9344 or 10.98 ± 1.009, while that of the GDM patients was respectively 13.21 ± 1.101, 13.78 ± 1.219 and 11.44 ± 1.449. Then, the Receiving operator characteristic (ROC) curve analysis revealed that the areas under the curve (AUC) of all kits were less than 0.7 (Lucica, AUC = 0.6149; Maccura, AUC = 0.6140; Gcell, AUC = 0.6078), which do not provide support for the utilization of GA as a screening tool for GDM.

CONCLUSION

GA is not a good indicator for screening GDM initially.