Burden of Diabetes and First Evidence for the Utility of HbA1c for Diagnosis and Detection of Diabetes in Urban Black South Africans: The Durban Diabetes Study

OBJECTIVE: Glycated haemoglobin (HbA(1c)) is recommended as an additional tool to glucose-based measures (fasting plasma glucose [FPG] and 2-hour plasma glucose [2PG] during oral glucose tolerance test [OGTT]) for the diagnosis of diabetes; however, its use in sub-Saharan African populations is not established. We assessed prevalence estimates and the diagnosis and detection of diabetes based on OGTT, FPG, and HbA(1c) in an urban black South African population. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: We conducted a population-based cross-sectional survey using multistage cluster sampling of adults aged ≥18 years in Durban (eThekwini municipality), KwaZulu-Natal. All participants had a 75-g OGTT and HbA(1c) measurements. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to assess the overall diagnostic accuracy of HbA(1c), using OGTT as the reference, and to determine optimal HbA(1c) cut-offs. RESULTS: Among 1190 participants (851 women, 92.6% response rate), the age-standardised prevalence of diabetes was 12.9% based on OGTT, 11.9% based on FPG, and 13.1% based on HbA(1c). In participants without a previous history of diabetes (n = 1077), using OGTT as the reference, an HbA(1c) ≥48 mmol/mol (6.5%) detected diabetes with 70.3% sensitivity (95%CI 52.7–87.8) and 98.7% specificity (95%CI 97.9–99.4) (AUC 0.94 [95%CI 0.89–1.00]). Additional analyses suggested the optimal HbA(1c) cut-off for detection of diabetes in this population was 42 mmol/mol (6.0%) (sensitivity 89.2% [95%CI 78.6–99.8], specificity 92.0% [95%CI: 90.3–93.7]). CONCLUSIONS: In an urban black South African population, we found a high prevalence of diabetes and provide the first evidence for the utility of HbA(1c) for the diagnosis and detection of diabetes in black Africans in sub-Saharan Africa.