Hemoglobin Lepore‐Boston‐Washington: A Rare Cause of Unmeasurable HbA1c and Diagnostic Challenge in Diabetes
Filippo Russo, Silvia Trombetti, Maria Rosaria Storino, Raffaele Sessa, Carmela De Felice, Giuseppe Schiavone, Michela Grosso · 2026
Read Hemoglobin Lepore‐Boston‐Washington: A Rare Cause of Unmeasurable HbA1c and Diagnostic Challenge in Diabetes by Filippo Russo, Silvia Trombetti, Maria Rosaria Storino, Raffaele Sessa, Carmela De Felice, Giuseppe Schiavone, Michela Grosso (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13420343.txt.
Description
Russo and colleagues report a 2026 case, written as a letter, in which a rare blood variant made the standard diabetes test useless. The variant, hemoglobin Lepore-Boston-Washington, forms when parts of two globin genes fuse into one. She carried two copies of the fused gene, so her blood held none of the normal adult hemoglobin the HbA1c test measures.
Fetal hemoglobin made up about three quarters of her hemoglobin, softening what would otherwise be severe anemia. With HbA1c impossible, the team used fructosamine, a marker of sugar control over the past few weeks that does not depend on hemoglobin type. Its high level showed poor control and guided treatment choices. Gene tests confirmed the exact defect. An unreadable HbA1c can thus signal a hidden hemoglobin disorder, not a broken test.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Filippo Russo, Silvia Trombetti, Maria Rosaria Storino, Raffaele Sessa, Carmela De Felice, Giuseppe Schiavone, Michela Grosso |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 19 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |