[Carbohydrate metabolism].

This review summarizes progress in glycosylation research of relevance to atherosclerosis. Glucose reacts in vivo with cellular proteins nonenzymatically and forms Amadori products. The Amadori products proceed very slowly to undergo a number of further dehydration and rearrangement to form advanced glycosylation end products (AGE). The AGE moiety are characterized by being brown, fluorescent chromophores that can cross-rink proteins. In contrast Amadori products, AGE are irreversible and accumulate on long-lived proteins (eg, collagen, enzyme, lens crystallins) for many years. AGE proteins can modify lipoproteins fibrinogen, collagen and DNA. AGE protein receptor is identified on macrophages. AGE may accelerate development of atherosclerosis by various manner.