By Alyx Arnett
For decades, the clinical lab’s contribution to diabetes care followed a familiar script: A patient showed up with symptoms, a clinician ordered an A1C or fasting glucose test, and the lab returned a number confirming the diagnosis.
That model is starting to shift. The 2026 American Diabetes Association Standards of Care place greater emphasis on earlier identification and more precise classification of diabetes, including the use of islet autoantibody testing in people at elevated risk for type 1 diabetes.1
“Ten years ago, the lab’s role in type 1 diabetes was predominantly to confirm disease,” says Jeanie Chiu, MD, medical director at Beckman Coulter Diagnostics. “Today, the paradigm has shifted toward presymptomatic detection and staging.”
That shift is…