CVD Risk Not Predicted by Blood Sugar Test: Study

The effectiveness of blood sugar testing in predicting the risk of cardiovascular disease is being called into question by a new study that is essentially calling assessment of HbA1c a waste of time and resources.

According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, additional information on glaciated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) values that can be obtained via blood testing provide little to no benefit in terms of cardiovascular risk prediction.

Researcher behind the study determined this after performing a comprehensive analysis of individual participant data from 73 studies on cardiovascular risk factors. A total of 294,998 participants, all healthy men and women without cardiovascular disease (CVD) or diabetes, were included in the analysis.

The data on these study participant's and their CVD risk factors were recorded for a little under 10 years. During a follow up of 9.9 years, 20,840 cases of CVD outcomes (coronary heart disease and/or stroke) were identified among the participants. With this information, the researcher were then able to compare models of risk assessment with and without the inclusion of data on HbA1c levels.

Accuracy of a prediction of a 10 year risk of CVD in each participant was equal-to or improved by the inclusion of hemoglobin levels, compared to prediction risk without the blood-sugar factor. However, overall, the researcher found that the addition of HbA1c data only contributed to a minuscule and insignificant change in the prediction accuracy.

According to authors of the study, these findings do not mean that researcher and physicians should ignore the potential impact of blood-sugar levels have on CVD development. However, the results do show that when physicians are assessing CVD risk alone, the inclusion of time-consuming and often costly blood-sugar blood tests in unnecessary.

The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on March 26.

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