Test characteristics of glycated albumin in the diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus

This study determined the test characteristics of glycated albumin in the diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus. The gold standard for diagnosing gestational diabetes mellitus is the oral glucose tolerance test which requires patient preparation, drinking of glucose solution, and multiple sample collections. A possible alternative biomarker for the diagnosis of gestational diabetes is glycated albumin does not require patient preparation and only one sample is collected. Glycated albumin levels are higher among Black Americans than in Caucasians. The study involved 200 pregnant women attending the antenatal clinic at the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital. The diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus was made using the World Health Organization 2013 diagnostic criteria. The test characteristics of glycated albumin were determined using the area under the curve of the receiver operator characteristic curve, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value. The prevalence of gestational diabetes mellitus was 9.0%. The area under the receiver operator characteristic curve for glycated albumin was 0.8 (95% CI 0.7-0.9; p=0.0001). The sensitivity and specificity of glycated albumin were 83.3% and 86.8% respectively. The positive predictive value was 38.5% and the negative predictive value was 98.1%. Glycated albumin has high sensitivity, specificity, and negative predictive values and therefore, can be used as a preliminary test for gestational diabetes mellitus.