Prospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Diabetes. Apr 15, 2025; 16(4): 102867
Published online Apr 15, 2025. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v16.i4.102867
Clinical utility of glycated albumin and 1,5-anhydroglucitol in the screening and prediction of diabetes: A multi-center study
Kam-Ching Ku, Junda Zhong, Erfei Song, Carol Ho-Yi Fong, Karen Siu-Ling Lam, Aimin Xu, Chi-Ho Lee, Chloe Yu-Yan Cheung
Kam-Ching Ku, Junda Zhong, Erfei Song, Carol Ho-Yi Fong, Karen Siu-Ling Lam, Aimin Xu, Chi-Ho Lee, Chloe Yu-Yan Cheung, Department of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 999077, China
Kam-Ching Ku, Junda Zhong, Erfei Song, Carol Ho-Yi Fong, Karen Siu-Ling Lam, Aimin Xu, Chi-Ho Lee, Chloe Yu-Yan Cheung, State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 999077, China
Kam-Ching Ku, Junda Zhong, Erfei Song, Carol Ho-Yi Fong, Karen Siu-Ling Lam, Aimin Xu, Chi-Ho Lee, Chloe Yu-Yan Cheung, Guangdong-Hong Kong Joint Institute of Metabolic Medicine, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 999077, China
Co-first authors: Kam-Ching Ku and Junda Zhong.
Co-corresponding authors: Chloe Yu-Yan Cheung and Chi-Ho Lee.
Author contributions: Cheung CYY, Xu A, Lam KSL and Lee CH conceptualized, designed and supervised the study; Ku KC, Zhong J, and Cheung CYY performed data analyses and prepared the first draft of the manuscript; Song E and Fong CHY were responsible for patient screening, enrollment, and collection of clinical data and blood specimens. All the authors have read and approved the final version of the article. Cheung CYY, Lee CH, Xu A, and Lam KSL critically reviewed and edited the manuscript. Ku KC and Zhong J made indispensable contributions towards the study and thus qualify as co-first authors of the paper. Cheung CYY and Lee CH contributed significantly to the study design, data interpretation, manuscript preparation and overall supervision of this study and thus qualify as co-corresponding authors.
Supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council Area of Excellence, No. AoE/M/707-18.
Institutional review board statement: The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Jinan University and the University of Hong Kong/Hospital Authority, Hong Kong West Cluster (Approval numbers: UW 20-700; UW 10-038).
Informed consent statement: All participants gave written informed consent before any study-related procedures were performed.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Lam KSL is a member of the advisory board of Eli Lilly. Lee CH received lecture and advisory board honorarium from Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Bayer, Novo Nordisk, Gilead, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Sanofi Aventis. All other authors of this study declare no conflicts of interest that pertain to this work. No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.
CONSORT 2010 statement: The authors have read the CONSORT 2010 Statement, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CONSORT 2010 Statement.
Data sharing statement: The datasets generated and/or analyzed in this study will not be made publicly available because of the privacy of the study participants, but are available from the Lead Contact upon reasonable request at cyy0219@hku.hk.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Chloe Yu-Yan Cheung, PhD, Department of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, No. 21 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong 999077, China. cyy0219@hku.hk
Received: October 31, 2024
Revised: December 24, 2024
Accepted: February 12, 2025
Published online: April 15, 2025
Processing time: 120 Days and 3.1 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: This study provides supporting evidence on the effectiveness of glycated albumin (GA) in identifying diabetes and monitoring glycemic control among morbidly-obese individuals. It also highlights the potential clinical utility of the simple ‘B3A’ model, which comprises body mass index, glycated hemoglobin, GA and 1,5-anhydroglucitol (1,5-AG), for predicting diabetes in a community-based cohort. Our findings suggest that both GA and 1,5-AG could serve as supplementary biomarkers, potentially replacing the conventional clinical indicators to predict diabetes. The ‘B3A’ model requires only a single tube of blood sample and simple non-invasive body measurements, making it especially useful for large-scale population screening.