In their commentary on the impact of new guidelines for glucose tolerance testing, Andrew Lyon and associates1 argue against increased use of the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) on the grounds of poor reproducibility, cumbersomeness and questionable cost-effectiveness. They rightly conclude that devoting resources to programs that can help patients to modify their risk for diabetes is preferable to performing more OGTTs. However, it would have been appreciated if they had considered the simplified or abbreviated version of the glucose tolerance test2,3 in terms of its suitability for detecting new cases of diabetes; this form of the test would be both reliable and less expensive.
Gurusamy Sivagnanam Asian Institute of Medicine, Science and Technology Kedah, Malaysia
References
- 1.Lyon AW, Larsen ET, Edwards AL. The impact of new guidelines for glucose tolerance testing on clinical practice and laboratory services. CMAJ 2004;171(9):1067-9. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed]
- 2.Posner NA, Silverstone FA, Breuer J, Heller M. Simplifying the intravenous glucose tolerance test. J Reprod Med 1982;27(10):633-8. [PubMed]
- 3.Forrest RD, Jackson CA, Yudkin JS. The abbreviated glucose tolerance test in screening for diabetes: the Islington Diabetes Survey. Diabet Med 1988; 5(6):557-61. [DOI] [PubMed]