The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) on Thursday released a position statement revising cut-offs for high blood sugar and diabetes, reinstating a one-hour diagnostic test that provides many advantages over the current two-hour test.

Under the revisions, people whose blood glucose levels one hour after a standard 75gm oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) are 155 mg per dl or higher should be considered to have intermediate-high blood sugar and prescribed lifestyle intervention and diabetes prevention strategies.

People whose blood glucose levels one hour after the OGTT are 209 mg per dl or higher should be considered to have type-2 diabetes and be referred for confirmatory diagnosis, evaluation and treatment, the federation said.

The federation’s position statement adopts recommendations made last year by an international panel of seven experts urging the widespread adoption of the one-hour test, amid concerns that existing diagnostic criteria can miss impending diabetes in many people.

Existing diagnostic criteria label people with fasting blood glucose below 100 as normal, 100 to 125 as prediabetes, and blood glucose levels 140 to 199 two hours after the OGTT as prediabetes and 200 or higher after OGTT as diabetes.

“This is the revival of the one-hour glucose test — something some of us have always advocated,” said Viswanathan Mohan, chief of research at the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation, Chennai.

“The one-hour value is important. The public should know this,” Mohan told The Telegraph on Thursday, hours after the IDF position statement was published in Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, a peer-reviewed medical journal.