Sickle cell trait could throw off diabetes test, study finds

People with sickle cell trait — those who have one sickle cell gene but do not experience sickle cell disease — may need specific laboratory monitoring for blood sugar in order to detect and treat pre-diabetes and diabetes, researchers in Ghana have found.

Immunoturbidimetry, a common laboratory assay used to measure the concentration of specific proteins in a sample, significantly underestimated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) blood sugar levels in people with sickle cell trait compared to high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), a technique that separates and quantifies specific components in liquids, investigators found. Relying on immunoturbidimetry therefore could lead to an underclassification of pre-diabetes and failure to detect diabetes in these individuals. The study was presented at the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine (ADLM) 2026 meeting in Anaheim, California.