Wallace AS, Rooney MR, Brady TM, et al. - Among youth without diabetes, glycated albumin (GA: a non-fasting test) failed to detect those carrying a high cardiometabolic risk, and it does not seem to afford a suitable biomarker for screening of hyperglycemia.

• In US youth, growing concerns include diabetes and prediabetes.

• From the 1999–2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a total of 6,826 youth without diabetes aged 8–19 years were cross-sectionally analyzed to assess the links of GA with HbA1c, fasting glucose (FG), and cardiometabolic risk factors.

• A poor correlation of glycated albumin with HbA1c and FG was found, and GA was negatively related to BMI and cardiometabolic risk factors.

• A higher prevalence of obesity (29.9% vs 7.6%), low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (29.7% vs 16.5%), and hypertensive blood pressure (4.0% vs 2.7%) was observed in youth in the lowest GA tertile (<12.4%) vs those in the highest tertile (≥13.5%).

• There was a poor correlation between glycated albumin and conventional markers of hyperglycemia in youth without diabetes.

• Counterintuitively, a negative link was found between GA and BMI.