Ribera Lab, a benchmark in a technique for diagnosing diabetes that detects haemoglobin variants

• The laboratory division of the Ribera health group participates as a speaker at the training day on glycated haemoglobin (HbA1C) in Serbia in Barcelona, with attendees from clinical laboratories throughout Spain.
• Findings from healthy patients carrying haemoglobin variants are important, especially in the case of patients of childbearing age, to avoid severe haematological disorders in the offspring.

Ribera Lab has become a benchmark laboratory in Spain due to its extensive experience in one of the techniques for the diagnosis of diabetes, specifically, the one based on the determination of glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) by capillary electrophoresis. “The determination of HbA1c is very useful in the diagnosis and monitoring of diabetes mellitus. At Riberalab, the technique of choice for its analysis is based on capillary electrophoresis, which offers several advantages over other techniques currently available, such as the detection of healthy patients carrying haemoglobin variants,” explains Lara Hernando, technical director of the laboratory division of the Ribera healthcare group.

Lara Hernando, Ribera Lab’s national technical director, recently attended a training day on glycated haemoglobin (HbA1C) at Sebia in Barcelona as a speaker, with a session prepared together with Raquel López, technical director of Ribera Lab’s central laboratory, in which attendees from clinical laboratories from all over Spain participated, as Ribera Lab is one of the largest laboratories in Spain working with this technique.

“The chance findings, thanks to this technique, of healthy patients carrying haemoglobin variants are important, especially in the case of patients of childbearing age, especially because it is recommended that the same test be performed on their partners to rule out the presence of the same variant and thus prevent their offspring from having serious haematological disorders,” explains Lara Hernando.

In addition, as Ribera Lab’s technical director explains, the capillary electrophoresis determination of glycated haemoglobin allows alerting of potentially interfered or “unreliable” values of this substance, due to the presence of these variants. “In this way, the healthcare professional who has requested the test can evaluate the results obtained for a more specific diagnosis or an exhaustive follow-up of the patient, in order to make treatment decisions in the most accurate clinical context possible.