Measuring glycemic variability and correlating it with diabetes complications faces numerous challenges, including data accuracy, multiplicity of measures, and high correlation with mean glucose.
This commentary reviews several of the challenges encountered when attempting to quantify glycemic variability and correlate it with risk of diabetes complications. These challenges include (1) immaturity of the field, including problems of data accuracy, precision, reliability, cost, and availability; (2) larger relative error in the estimates of glycemic variability than in the estimates of the mean glucose; (3) high correlation between glycemic variability and mean glucose level; (4) multiplicity of measures; (5) correlation of the multiple measures; (6) duplication or reinvention of methods; (7) confusion of measures of glycemic variability with measures of quality of glycemic control; (8) the problem of multiple comparisons when assessing relationships among multiple measures of variability and multiple clinical end points; and (9) differing needs for routine clinical practice and clinical research applications.
David Rodbard (Tue,) conducted a review in Diabetes (glycemic variability). Glycemic variability measurement was evaluated. Measuring glycemic variability and correlating it with diabetes complications faces numerous challenges, including data accuracy, multiplicity of measures, and high correlation with mean glucose.