Since I am not that busy at the moment, I spend sometime to understand few biochemical procedures involved in managing diabetes. All diabetic patients nowadays are managed by measuring their blood glucose and for long term management, their blood glucose are measured in term of HbA1c.
Everytime I went to the diabetes clinic, all the children with diabetes will go to the nurse and the nurse will prick their fingers to take sample of their blood. HbA1c is part of the red blood cells and people with diabetes have slightly higher proportion of HbA1c. The more glucose they have in the blood, the more glucose stick to the blood cells (HbA1c) and the lifespan of these blood cells is about 3 months. Thus, by measuring HbA1c, you actually measure the average of 3-months blood glucose :)
Now, the process involved in measuring HbA1c can be either high-pressure cation-exchange chromatography, electrophoresis or immunoturbidometric methods. I know the concept of electrophoresis but not the other two procedures. Google them up and read the procedures. Interesting :).
Nevertheless, if someone offer me to do research something to do with lab, most probably I reject it :). Spending hours after hours in the lab is not something that I like.
Everytime I went to the diabetes clinic, all the children with diabetes will go to the nurse and the nurse will prick their fingers to take sample of their blood. HbA1c is part of the red blood cells and people with diabetes have slightly higher proportion of HbA1c. The more glucose they have in the blood, the more glucose stick to the blood cells (HbA1c) and the lifespan of these blood cells is about 3 months. Thus, by measuring HbA1c, you actually measure the average of 3-months blood glucose :)
Now, the process involved in measuring HbA1c can be either high-pressure cation-exchange chromatography, electrophoresis or immunoturbidometric methods. I know the concept of electrophoresis but not the other two procedures. Google them up and read the procedures. Interesting :).
Nevertheless, if someone offer me to do research something to do with lab, most probably I reject it :). Spending hours after hours in the lab is not something that I like.
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