Hi

According to SA guidelines, a fasting laboratory glucose (done in the morning after fasting for 8 hours) is considered normal if it is less than 110, pre-diabetes if it is between 110 and 126, and diabetes if it is 126 or more. Normally we would want two abnormal results, or one abnormal result with associated symptoms like tiredness, weight loss, drinking lots of water and passing too much urine. The other way to test glucose is to do a glucose tolerance test where you go to the lab fasting and they give one 75grams of glucose to drink in water and then test your glucose levels after 2 hours. The cut off for diabetes is a level of 200 or higher at 2 hours and normal is less than 140. Between these two levels is considered pre- diabetes. Some patients will be normal on one test and abnormal on another, so sometimes we may do  both. We don’t normally use the fingerprick test, as the levels are a bit more variable. An HbA1c of 6.5% or higher is compatible with diabetes, as long as there are symptoms, or otherwise you will need a repeat level to confirm