Measurement of glucose and diagnosis of diabetes mellitus

: In order to reduce the number of complications associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus, clinicians have begun to screen for asymptomatic diabetes more intensely. The American Diabetes Association has proposed new guidelines for the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus to obtain a more simple diagnostic procedure. This is now mainly based on measurements of at least two fasting venous plasma glucose concentrations. The risk of wrong conclusions are larger using the glucose tolerance test due to the large intra-individual biological variation. It would be desirable if a national consensus of using either whole blood glucose values or plasma values could be reached, in order to obtain a more simple system. As the influence of haematocrit are omitted by using plasma, it is suggested that diagnostic glucose concentrations are measured in venous plasma/serum. Capillary blood values measured in connection with treatment could be converted to plasma values.