Faster Electrophoretic Mobility of Albumin in Diabetes

To the Editor.—  Serum protein electrophoresis is an assay commonly performed in the majority of clinical laboratories. Our laboratory performs an average of 11,000 serum electrophoresis assays per year using plastic plates coated with a thin layer of agarose in barbital buffer (pH 8.6) and amido black 10B staining. I observed in about 0.3% of newly hospitalized patients that albumin moved more anodal in electrophoresis when compared with albumin of normal persons. However, the migration was much slower than that of prealbumin, ie, about 1 to 2 mm ahead of the normally migrating albumin. All of these patients had diabetes mellitus that was poorly controlled in more than 95% of them (eg, blood glucose concentration >180 mg/dL, glycosuria (3+) at admission regardless of previous or present treatment).It was shown that albumin has a faster electrophoretic mobility in genetically diabetic mice.¹ Lately, it was reported that in certain conditions