Background Glycated albumin, in contrast to glycated haemoglobin, precisely reflects glycaemic control and predicts all-cause mortality in haemodialysis patients with diabetes mellitus. However, whether those associations exist in diabetes mellitus… Click to show full abstract
Background Glycated albumin, in contrast to glycated haemoglobin, precisely reflects glycaemic control and predicts all-cause mortality in haemodialysis patients with diabetes mellitus. However, whether those associations exist in diabetes mellitus patients receiving peritoneal dialysis remains unclear. Methods This was a retrospective cross-sectional and longitudinal observational study. We measured glycated albumin, glycated haemoglobin and casual plasma glucose for two months in diabetes mellitus-peritoneal dialysis (n = 44) and diabetes mellitus-haemodialysis (n = 88) patients (age-, gender-matched). The diabetes mellitus-peritoneal dialysis patients were followed for three years to monitor occurrence of all-cause mortality. Results Glycated albumin and glycated albumin/casual plasma glucose ratios, but not casual plasma glucose, glycated haemoglobin, or glycated haemoglobin/casual plasma glucose, were significantly lower in the diabetes mellitus-peritoneal dialysis as compared with the diabetes mellitus-haemodialysis patients. The regression lines between casual plasma glucose and glycated albumin showed a significant parallel shift downwards in diabetes mellitus-peritoneal dialysis as compared with diabetes mellitus-haemodialysis patients, while the slope did not differ significantly between the groups, resulting in underestimation of glycaemic control by 4.5%. Kapan-Meier analysis of the diabetes mellitus-peritoneal dialysis patients revealed that higher glycated albumin (median >18.0%), but not glycated haemoglobin (median >6.6%), indicated significantly elevated risk for all-cause mortality, which occurred in 15 patients (34.1%), as compared with those with a lower glycated albumin concentration. Higher glycated albumin concentration was also significantly and independently associated with all-cause mortality in multivariate Cox proportional hazards analysis. Conclusions Glycated albumin, in contrast to glycated haemoglobin, more precisely reflects glycaemic control in diabetes mellitus-peritoneal dialysis patients, based on its significant association with all-cause mortality. Furthermore, adjustment of the true glycated albumin concentration by adding 4.5% might provide a more precise measurement for determining glycaemic control in such patients.
               
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