When you get your A1c results, your endocrinologist may also give you an average blood sugar number from a reference chart in the exam room. It helps “translate” the glycosylated hemoglobin figure into something more meaningful, and it’s easy for us to deal with the same apples that our meters produce than the oranges of an A1c percent. As set from the DCCT trials, presently an A1c of 6% correlates to an average blood sugar of 135mg/dl, and 7% equates to 170mg/dl.

Recently, a study of almost 500 Type 1, Type 2, and non-diabetics in Europe, Africa, and North America set out using continuous blood glucose monitoring and finger sticking over a four month period to establish with increased accuracy the correlation between blood sugar values and a newly established A1c standard from the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC.) Apparently, the findings exceeded expectations for accuracy, and officials who conducted the study are preparing to report their findings sometime around the end of the year.

The new IFCC reference number for A1c tests is calibrated in mmol/mol, and can be converted mathematically to mg/dl. In the study, accuracy levels exceeded 90% between the average glucose levels from CGMS/finger sticks and the new A1c test standards.

This all means that our A1c results in the future (hopefully not too long after the study results are published) can be given to us with a more accurate average blood sugar number. So when your endo refers to his A1c--mg/dl chart, you may want ask if it’s up to date with the new IFCC reference numbers.