Non-invasive Method for Detecting Skin Autofluorescence of Advanced Glycation End Products

Advanced Glycation end products (AGE) is thought to play a role in the pathogenesis of diabetes complications. All current methods for measuring AGE must take blood sampling and measure in vitro. AGE has fluorescence characteristics. If AGE is illuminated by light from 300-420 nm, 420-600 nm fluorescence is emitted. A novel non-invasive method for measuring skin AGE accumulation in vivo based on the characteristics has been developed. The fluorescence of skin was measured at the forearm in 40 patients with diabetes mellitus (Type 2) and in 40 control subjects, all subjects are Chinese. The result shows that fluorescence spectrum of the patients and the control subjects can be distinguished clearly. The fluorescence intensity is related with the concentration of skin AGE. The method provides a good alternative method to replace invasive measurement of AGE, and it may be a useful tool to diagnose AGE-related chronic complications in diabetes mellitus and other diseases associated with AGE.