Progression of vascular complications enhances the formation of advanced glycation end-products in the serum of patients with type 2 diabetes

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Abstract Advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) formation increases with metabolic disorders, leading to higher serum AGE levels in patients with progressive vascular complications. Measuring AGE levels in biological samples requires multiple pre-analytical processing steps, rendering analysis of multiple samples challenging. This study evaluated the progression of diabetic complications by analyzing AGE levels using a pre-analytical processing strategy based on a fully automated solid phase-extraction system. Serum samples from patients with diabetes with or without macrovascular complications (Mac or non-Mac) or microvascular complications (Mic or non-Mic) were processed with the established methods, and free and total AGE levels in sera were measured using liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry. In patients with diabetes, free and total AGE levels are elevated in those with complications compared to those without complications. In Mac and Mic groups, free and total AGE levels and z-scores, the sum of the normalized AGE levels, also increased. When distinguishing each complication, AGE z-scores were markedly higher than those of single AGE levels. Our study demonstrated that the free AGE z-score, measured using a new analytical processing method without hydrolysis, was correlated with the presence of vascular complications and therefore may act as a marker of disease complications.