Advanced Glycation Endproducts

Accumulation of AGEs

AGEs accumulate over a person’s lifetime, but this process occurs more rapidly in patients with conditions such as diabetes mellitus, renal failure and cardiovascular disease. Accumulation of AGEs is an important factor in the development of chronic complications of these conditions. Tissue AGEs correlate closely with early kidney, eye and nerve disease in patients with diabetes mellitus. Moreover they are valuable predictors of future cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.

Once accumulated AGEs will stay in the tissue for a long time. This is largely detemined by the lifetime of the protein to which the AGEs are cross-linked. The lifetimes of proteins in tissue are easily up to several years meaning that accumulated AGEs are expected to stay in the tissue for years. Due to this, new drugs aimed at preventing breaking and formation of AGEs are currently in (late) clinical development.