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Home A1C Testing vs. The Lab
So it was time again for my A1C and other blood tests last week. Over-time, in fact. You know how I hate going in to the lab when I have to be fasting for lipid tests and can’t even have a latte on the way over in the morning. Ugh! And who ever said diabetics don’t mind needles?!
Anyway, I’d been saving the review unit A1c Now SelfCheck pack I got from Bayer a few weeks ago for just this occasion. What better way to test the accuracy of home a A1C testing kit? I don’t mind admitting I had very little faith in the thing. My endo had some of these in her office last year, and we tried them several times. The results were always differed wildly from the A1C I got at the hospital lab. She thought her packs might be too old, although the date on the box seemed OK.
So after dragging my behind to the hospital that day, and then enjoying a lovely post-needle cafe breakfast with my husband, I went home and snipped the seal on my A1C Now pack. Inside were all the trimmings for two tests, along with a lot of documentation and a mini-CD that’s supposed to explain how to use it — which I didn’t watch of course. I figured I’d be representative of the “average patient” who is too lazy to watch the CD. (Not to mention that I have ZERO patience myself and ripped right into the thing without thinking 
)
Lucky for me, the little fold-out Reference Guide with photos did the trick. It told me what to open first, how to prick my finger for the blood (not more than a usual BG test!), and what to open only “AFTER blood collection!” And I must have done it right, because wouldn’t you know, I got 6.3 on the Bayer test, and a 6.4 reported back from the hospital lab. Pretty impressive! (Yes, for those science guys but also for me — under 6.5, Baby!)
So I got to experience the “5-minute home A1C” without the big hospital-sized blood draw, and without this view, which despite its bright colors always makes me queasy:
Here’s the deal, complete with blood-stained finger:
The only slightly “Twilight Zone” aspect was the picture on the product box:
Hey, they got exactly a 6.3 result, too! Weird. Hmm, a common occurrence? Or unexplained coincidence from “the land of both shadow and substance”?
I’m not sayin’ it’s rigged or anything. In fact, I’m blown away by the concurrence with my hospital results. Would I shell out $15 ($30 for the two-pack) to do this at home next time as long as no lipids are required? Yes, I do believe I would, in accordance with my goal in life: staying as far away from the hospital as possible. I’m so not kidding.
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Thanks for the comparison. I’ve been wondering about these tests as well.
Certainly didn’t want to find myself enjoying a “good” result only to be discouraged later. Or, vice versa.
At $15 that is worth every penny!
Thanks again!
Posted by: Bryan Ritchie | September 8th, 2009 at 6:15 amNice A1C!
Posted by: CALpumper aka Crystal | September 8th, 2009 at 6:16 amKeep up the great work.
AFAIK different labs have different standards when it comes to HbA1c test reporting…one of the labs gave my average blood glucose as ~160 for my A1c whereas another lab (subsequent 3 month test) got the exact same A1c number but gave a different average blood glucose number.
Did it happen with the two tests (lab and home) that you have?
Posted by: John Smith | September 8th, 2009 at 7:00 amThanks for this post. I’ve wondered about testing at home. It might be good for me since my goal is to get under 7.0 before the year end. AND considering I never get my A1c result before I leave the lab this would help me out.
Posted by: Andrea B. | September 8th, 2009 at 7:29 amI had invested in a kit myself but didn’t do a comparion to having a “real” a1c done. My first one was a 7.4 but when I went to the endo a couple of weeks later it was 8.3 there
Didn’t expect such a difference, even with a couple of weeks in between. Glad you had a better result .. in both the comparison and especially the reading!! Keep up your good work!
Posted by: Stacey Divone | September 8th, 2009 at 7:30 amI wonder if it is similarly accurate at higher A1c levels… Did it come with documentation showing comparisons with lab A1c tests?
Posted by: Anne | September 8th, 2009 at 7:32 amI took advantage of the various A1c tests offered on the exhibit floor at ADA 2009. 5 different results from 6 tests – anywhere from 5.6-6.3. What is my A1c?
Posted by: Ellen | September 8th, 2009 at 7:47 amWonder if they’d do a free trial? That price really isn’t bad, but I’d want to be pretty sure I wasn’t just pitching my money away….Ro
Posted by: bill | September 8th, 2009 at 8:13 amI meant to include I have not been dx’d with diabetes (yet?). My son has type 1 – 20 years.
Posted by: Ellen | September 8th, 2009 at 8:22 amIf it hadn’t been for your hospital lab test I would have assumed all the A1C at home tests read 6.3
Posted by: William Lee Dubois | September 8th, 2009 at 8:56 amYeah, me too, Wil. That was the ’suspicious’ thing about it…
Posted by: AmyT | September 8th, 2009 at 9:16 amI tried a home A1c test maybe 3 years ago or so. I don’t remember the brand or anything. Like you, i tested within a day of having gone to the lab, and it was only off by 0.1. I only did it that one time, just to see how it was, but I was happy enough with it. The tests seemed to disappear not so long after that though.
I always have to get other tests done too along with a spot urine, so there’s not really any point to me using it other than to feed my neurosis about knowing what it is far more often than I really need to know
Posted by: Lee Ann Thill | September 8th, 2009 at 11:24 amI’ve been thinking about getting one of these for a while. I’ll have to check it out, thanks for the info.
Posted by: Bernard Farrell | September 8th, 2009 at 12:21 pm10 labs can produce 10 different A1cs from the same sample of my blood within the range of 2 percentage points.
Mostly I succeed in keeping my 1h postprandial bg spikes below 160 mg/dl, but my A1c would not be any different, if I let it jump up to 300 and more on a regular basis, if only it would be down to 80-100 mg/dl 2-3 hours later.
So a good A1c does not necessarily bode of lots of completely healthy bg-curves but a bad one does betray a larger amount of a substantial number of hours far above the healthy range per day
Posted by: Hans | September 9th, 2009 at 5:43 amFacit: The A1c-test cannot help in any way to get a daily bg-curve closer to the healthy one. So I’d rather have some more bg test strips if I was looking for something useful to spend my money on.
Amy,
I was thinking about getting this A1c home test as well, thanks for writing about it. So jealous of your a1c by the way!
Posted by: Gina | September 9th, 2009 at 10:10 amThanks Amy! Our endo and diabetes educator has continuously toted the fact that these don’t work, so it will be nice to go back and prove that they do! Let me know if you have others that post that have tried it and gotten an accurate test off of both the lab and home A1C. Thanks!
Posted by: Traci Wennerholm | September 9th, 2009 at 5:25 pmI’m glad the at-home version matched your lab version. I’d love to see others compare their results, too!
(And I just rec’d my A1C result yesterday – you and I are matchy-matchy! 6.3 for the win.)
Posted by: Kerri. | September 10th, 2009 at 8:22 amImpressive is right- and the results were instant!
Posted by: k2 | September 10th, 2009 at 2:52 pmI recently received several a1c tests to try in the mail- but all require the user to mail them to the lab to get the results!
Way to go!
Kelly K
Great post. I tried this several years ago with another home test that I had found on the internet and compared it with a test that I had done a few days later at the lab and it was identical. I’m prediabetic so I check from time to time but haven’t done an A1C since then. A few times when I thought about doing it and asked at different pharmacy’s I would either get a reaction like “you want a what?” to “oh, yeah we did have a few of those but I don’t think we do now, let me get the catalog”. You’ve given me the incentive to get a Bayer home test. At that price it’s much cheaper than going to the doc as my health insurance sucks – my deductible is sky high.
Posted by: Bev | September 11th, 2009 at 5:29 amHmmm. My recent experiment with the same product yielded wildly divergent results compared to in-office (note not lab) endo result.
6.7 at endo, 7.6 then 7.4 on the self-check.
Which result to trust? I’m going with the endo (OK, NOT just ’cause it’s lower) but because it matches up to my meter averages and how those typically correlate to my A1Cs.
Posted by: Kelly Rawlings | September 11th, 2009 at 9:09 amThat is too funny that your result (way to go!) matched the box picture! Crazy!
Posted by: Scott K. Johnson | September 14th, 2009 at 7:21 amWhen we go to our doctor’s main office at the major hospital, they do it in the lab and take a huge drop of blood for the A1C. But when we go to the satellite office, they lance my daughter’s finger with her own lancing device, draw only one drop of blood, and have the results right away. I’ve always wondered what the difference is.
Either way, they give her a sugar-free lollipop when she is done!
Posted by: Leighann | September 15th, 2009 at 7:59 pmI have used the Bayer A1cNow meter after a check at the VA and the VA said I was at 8.4 and Bayer said I was at 8.5 and didn’t match what was on the box, darn! The VA tests me about every 6 months and sometimes longer.
Maybe Bayer will start selling refill tests sometime soon, I really hate to throw the meter out in the trash. I will keep buying and using it til something better comes along.
Type 2 since 1991
Posted by: Conrad | September 28th, 2009 at 11:28 pmI’m definitely going to have to try this. The one thing that worries me is the many different reports (at least in these comments) of greatly varying results. How accurate are these supposed to be?
Posted by: James Maynard | December 31st, 2009 at 8:46 am