Determination of hemoglobin-derived advanced glycation end products deploying metal salts in solution: Towards development of low-cost detection technique

Abstract

The elevated blood sugar in Type II diabetes results in protein glycation that leads to the formation of Advanced Glycation Endproducts (AGEs) and cause severe pathogenic complications such as cardiovascular diseases, nephropathies, retinopathies, neurodegenerative diseases, etc. In our earlier work we have shown that gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) can be synthesized both in presence and absence of external reducing agent by in vitro generated AGEs from Hemoglobin A0 (HbA0). In the current work we have found that these highly reactive Hb derived AGEs (Hb-AGEs) are also capable of reducing silver ions and synthesize silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) with a different plasmonic response than the control solutions. It was observed that the concentration of AGE and metal salts play a vital role in the formation of nanoparticles and time-dependent stabilization of the particles. The lowest detection limit (LOD) showed that the reactions are highly sensitive because as low as 1 ng/μl of AGEs can be detected. When reduction of the two metal ions (Au 3 + and Ag + ) were compared it was found that the AuNPs could be a better choice for the colorimetric sensing due to the appearance of plasmon in the visible range, while AgNPs could serve as a cost-effective determinant of AGEs. Therefore, in conclusion we confirm that AGEs can be detected just by deploying metal salts in solution.