Advanced glycation end-products
Also called: AGEs
What it means
Advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) are compounds that form when excess sugar damages proteins in the body, including the collagen that gives bone its flexibility and strength.
AGEs can make bone weaker even when a DEXA scan looks normal, which matters if you have diabetes and want to understand your real fracture risk.
Advanced glycation end-products, or AGEs, form when sugar interacts with proteins in the body, including collagen, the fibrous protein that gives bone its flexibility. When AGEs build up in collagen, they impair its quality, even if the mineral content of the bone looks fine on a scan.
This matters most for people with Type 2 diabetes. Their bone density may appear normal or even elevated on a DEXA scan, but the bone itself is weaker because AGEs have degraded the collagen. This helps explain why people with Type 2 diabetes fracture more often than their bone density numbers would suggest. Type 1 diabetes affects bone differently, mainly by reducing bone density directly because insulin itself supports bone building.
If you have diabetes, this is useful context for a conversation with your doctor about your fracture risk, since density numbers alone may not tell the full story.
How sure is this?
Graded Established Science: Supported by broad scientific consensus and decades of research. Read each study with its grade in mind. One study is a piece of the picture, not the whole of it.
Where the Academy teaches it
This page is the short version. The lessons teach it in full, with the context around it and a quiz to lock it in.
Related words
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