Translating Hemoglobin A1c into Average Blood Glucose: Implications for Clinical Chemistry

2 is a funda-mental component of themanagement of patients with diabetesmellitus. Hb A1cmeasurement provides an in-dication of chronic exposure to glucose and is exten-sively used for both monitoring long-term glycemic status and evaluating whether an individual patient has attained adequate metabolic control. The patient’s Hb A1c value is used by clinicians to determine whether glucose-lowering therapy is adequate. A recent report (1) establishes a mathematical relationship between Hb A1c and the average glucose (AG) concentration in blood. The findings presented are likely to have consid-erable impact on the way Hb A1c is reported by clinical laboratories and used by healthcare providers (and pa-tients). The importance and potential consequences o