Biological Variation of Glycohemoglobin

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Abstract
Glycohemoglobin (GHb) is a measure of long-term mean glycemia that predicts risks for the development and/or progression of diabetic complications in patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes (1)(2). Several reports have suggested, however, that although the within-subject variation in GHb unrelated to glycemia is minimal, there is substantial between-subject variation in GHb, e.g., “low glycators” and “high glycators” (3)(4)(5). These reports have suggested that because of this large between-subject variation, GHb may not be useful for diabetes screening or diagnosis and that when GHb is used for routine management of patients with diabetes, different patients may require very different GHb target values to achieve the same overall glycemic status. We therefore examined the biological variation of GHb and fasting plasma glucose (FPG) in nondiabetic individuals.