Background: In the past 60 years, the median age of the entire world population has increased and ageing and chronic diseases are now the main medical concerns in the developed world. The identification of early signs of disease pathogenesis is vital for prevention and targeting populations at risk in order to reduce morbidity and mortality. Glycation is well-established as an index of control, or otherwise, and a predictor of end-organ damage, for people with type 2 diabetes. At the beginning of the work for this thesis (2010), evidence was beginning to be raised to suggest that since glycation levels vary considerably, in normoglycaemic, non-diabetic individuals, glycation cannot be solely related to glucose levels and early reports allowed for speculations about a relationship between early glycation and oxidative stress. The aim of this thesis was to establish the relationship between early glycation and oxidative stress in normoglycaemia using techniques from the full breadth of Human Nutrition Research.
Methods: In study 1, existing epidemiological data were used to identify relationships between proxies for redox status and early glycation in non-diabetic individuals. One-way ANOVA, Chi-squared and multivariate linear regressions, adjusted for all known confounders were used to explore associations of HbA1c with self-reported smoking status and fruit & vegetables consumptions in the Scottish Health Surveys 2003-2010, among individuals without known diabetes and HbA1c20cigarettes/day) than non-smokers (p