Israeli scientists have found a simple blood now used to diagnose Type 2 diabetes can also predict whether certain individuals are more likely to develop the condition, long before signs or symptoms emerge.
 

The findings, published in the European Journal of General Practice, could help doctors provide earlier diagnosis and treatment of Type 2 diabetes, Medical Xpress reports.
 

About 26 million Americans have diabetes, but another 79 million are thought to have "pre-diabetes" — meaning they are at risk of developing Type 2 diabetes because their blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not high enough to meet the clinical definition of the disease.
 

In healthy people, blood sugar is absorbed from the blood for use by various tissues and organs. But people with Type 2 diabetes have higher-than-normal blood sugar levels and are resistant to insulin, which regulates carbohydrate and fat metabolism in the body. People with pre-diabetes have blood sugar levels somewhere between normal and diabetic.
 

To test for blood glucose levels over time, doctors test for glycated hemoglobin, or A1c, in the blood. When blood glucose levels are high, more A1c is formed. The A1c test has long been used to monitor diabetes.
 

According to the American Diabetes Association and World Health Organization, an A1c level of 6.5 percent or more is an indicator of the disease and an A1c level of between 5.7 and 6.4 percent is an indicator of pre-diabetes. The test is simpler to administer than the most common blood glucose tests, requiring neither fasting nor consuming anything.
 

But Nataly Lerner, M.D., of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and her colleagues have discovered the A1c test can reveal an individual's risk of developing diabetes before he or she develops either condition — far earlier than previously believed.

"Our study supports the idea that the A1c test, used to diagnose Type 2 diabetes, can also be used at a much earlier stage to screen for the disease in the high risk population, like overweight patients," said Dr. Lerner.
 

The findings are based on an analysis of the medical records of 10,201 patients who were given the test in central Israel between 2002 and 2005. The results showed 22.5 percent of the patients developed diabetes within five to eight years. Patients with A1c levels as low as 5.5 percent were significantly more likely to develop diabetes than those with A1c levels below 5.5 percent. Every 0.5 percent increase in A1c levels up to 7 percent doubled the patients' risk of developing diabetes. Obesity also doubled patients' risk of developing diabetes.
 

"We were actually able to quantify how risk increases with A1c levels," said Dr. Lerner. "This could allow doctors to make more informed decisions regarding diabetes prevention."