Because I believe systemic inflammation underlies many destructive processes related to aging, and because it now appears that GlycA aggregates concentration and glycosylation/branching changes across multiple proteins, GlycA might serve as a composite readout of chronic, systemic inflammatory tone.
Analytically GlycA is very stable (unlike hsCRP or even IL-6) even though it correlates with hsCRP, fibrinogen, IL-6, etc. GlycA is said to track cardiometabolic risk, incident CVD, infection risk, and all-cause mortality, often independently of hsCRP. Because long-term stability of GlycA is better than hsCRP, it is optimally useful for serial monitoring of low-grade inflammation. In one pooled data study, GlycA related more strongly to MI, whereas hsCRP related more to ischemic stroke, suggesting a partially distinct biology.
With this in mind, I decided to test my GlycA for the first time. Having recently tested my hsCRP and Il-6 with the results of 0.35 and <2.5, respectively, I was expecting or at least hoping for a low test result. I was surprised to receive a report of 378, which is within the average range but not optimal and considerably discordant with my consistent CRRP and IL-6 metrics.
GPT-5.0 Pro suggested that this discordance is not rare and suggested I look for subtle chronic processes such as neutrophil activity, or metabolic, oral, or renal inflammation. My neutrophil count is in the middle of the normal range but my lymphocytes are toward the low end of the normal range, so there could be something there. I’ll begin looking around for other issues to see what I can identify but I thought it worth sharing in case others have or plan on assessing their GlycA.
Below is GPT’s analysis of typical metrics but I have not yet validated them. From some tables I consulted, the GlycA metric appears to be nonlinear with respect to risk.
Population Reference (healthy donors) ~288–518 µmol/L overall:
Men 273–487
Women 299–522
Mean Men ~370 µmol/L
Mean Women ~395 µmol/L