In 1912 Louis-Camille Maillard, a French Chemist, conducted a simple experiment in his lab that turned out to be a shortcut that created meat flavor and aroma through heating sugar and amino acids. This chemical reaction has thus been called Maillard Reaction or Browning Reaction. Following extensive researches on the Maillard Reaction across diverse fields from food, nutrition to theraputics, a term of Advanced Glycation Endproducts or AGEs has been introduced to describe the end products of Maillard Reaction that form under normal physiological conditions in living organisms.
AGEs accumulate with ageing in normal condition, but this process occurs more rapidly in patients with conditions such as diabetes and renal failure. The accumulation of AGEs can initiate a wide range of abnormal responses in cells and tissues such as inappropriate expression of growth factors, alteration in growth dynamics, accumulation of extracellular matrix, promotion of vasoregulatory dysfunction and initiation of death pathways. Skin AGE's, determined in skin tissue samples, correlate closely with early kidney, eye and nerve disease in patients with diabetes mellitus.
Until now it has been complicated to measure tissue AGEs in patients because existing methods are expensive, time consuming, lack specificity, are poorly reproducible and/or are invasive. In addition, there is currently no gold standard for AGEs measurements.
