Association between Urinary Advanced Glycation End Products and Subclinical Inflammation in Children and Adolescents: Results from the Italian I.Family cohort.

Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs) have been positively correlated with inflammationin adults, while inconsistent evidence is available in children. We evaluated the associationbetween urinary AGEs, measured by fluorescence spectroscopy, and biomarkers of subclinical inflammationin 676 healthy children/adolescents (age 11.8 1.6 years, M SD) from the Italiancohort of the I.Family project. Urinary fluorescent AGEs were used as independent variable andhigh-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) was the primary outcome, while other biomarkers ofinflammation were investigated as secondary outcomes. Participants with urinary AGEs above themedian of the study population showed statistically significantly higher hs-CRP levels as comparedto those below the median (hs-CRP 0.44 1.1 vs. 0.24 0.6 mg/dL, M SD p = 0.002). We foundsignificant positive correlations between urinary AGEs and hs-CRP (p = 0.0001), IL-15 (p = 0.001),IP-10 (p = 0.006), and IL-1Ra (p = 0.001). At multiple regression analysis, urinary AGEs, age, andBMI Z-score were independent variables predicting hs-CRP levels. We demonstrated for the firsttime, in a large cohort of children and adolescents, that the measurement of fluorescent urinary AGEsmay represent a simple, noninvasive, and rapid technique to evaluate the association between AGEsand biomarkers of inflammation. Our data support a role of AGEs as biomarkers of subclinicalinflammation in otherwise healthy children and adolescents.