Publications

Background:  In type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), achieving HbA1c target value <7% has been shown to reduce diabetic vascular complications1, however laboratory determinations of plasma HbA1c are yet not widely available and standardized in all services in addition to its high cost2. Previous studies give prominence on HbA1c being used as a valuable biomarker for prognosticating serum lipid status in T2DM. However, dyslipidemia can predict HbA1c level suggesting that screening of dyslipidemia and its better control could be of great benefit in optimizing HbA1c3. Measuring serum triglyceride (TG) level as part of TyG index can be a useful and cost-effective marker and represent the glycemic and cardiovascular status of an individual concurrently. Methods: A retrospective study with 197 T2DM patients divided into 2 groups: HbA1c >7(n=170) and HbA1c <7(n=27) were recruited. Result: FBS was 165.69 ±60.60 with correlation coefficient of 0.67 (n=197), Triglycerides was 160.77 ± 83.88 with correlation coefficient of 0.16 and TyG Index was 5.01 ± 0.31 with correlation coefficient on the entire dataset. On dividing into 2 groups, FBS and TyG had a moderate but significant correlation with HbA1c in the group with HbA1c >7 with 0.65 and 0.45 corelation coefficients respectively (n=170). Conclusion: TyG index calculated from glucose and triglyceride values is less expensive than HbA1c. TyG index has a significant correlation with HbA1c and can be used as a surrogate marker for assessing the glycemic status. It can be particularly useful in those groups of patients where HbA1c cannot be estimated due to preanalytical factors.