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 inflammation in adults, while inconsistent evidence is available in children. We evaluated the association between urinary AGEs, measured by fluorescence spectroscopy, and biomarkers of subclinical inflammation in 676 healthy children/adolescents (age 11.8 ± 1.6 years, M ± SD) from the Italian cohort of the I.Family project. Urinary fluorescent AGEs were used as independent variable and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) was the primary outcome, while other biomarkers of inflammation were investigated as secondary outcomes. Participants with urinary AGEs above the median of the study population showed statistically significantly higher hs-CRP levels as compared to those below the median (hs-CRP 0.44 ± 1.1 vs. 0.24 ± 0.6 mg/dL, M ± SD p = 0.002). We found significant 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, and BMI Z-score were independent variables predicting hs-CRP levels. We demonstrated for the first time, in a large cohort of children and adolescents, that the measurement of fluorescent urinary AGEs may represent a simple, noninvasive, and rapid technique to evaluate the association between AGEs and biomarkers of inflammation. Our data support a role of AGEs as biomarkers of subclinical inflammation in otherwise healthy children and adolescents.