The purpose of this work was to study the effect of diabetes on 125I-labelled insulin-like growth factor (IGF) binding to specific serum binding proteins (IGFBPs) and the possible role of protein glycation in such an effect. Accordingly, ligand blotting and fructosamine assays were performed in serum samples from diabetic and non-diabetic eSS rats as well as in samples of normal rat serum previously incubated with different concentrations of glucose. IGFBPs with molecular weights of 24, 30 and 40 kDa were identified in samples from diabetic and non-diabetic rats. 125I-Labelled IGF-I binding to each of these fractions increased significantly in the serum of diabetic rats. IGF-I binding to IGFBP-40 increased significantly as a function of the degree of glycation of serum proteins. Conversely, the increased binding of IGFBP-24 and IGFBP-30 was related only to the glucose concentration attained at 120 min during the oral glucose tolerance test. Glycation of proteins of normal serum and the binding of labelled IGF-I increased as a function of glucose concentration in the incubation media. In these in-vitro glycated normal sera, only the binding to IGFBP-40 increased significantly; this increase was closely related to the amount of protein glycation. No clear and reproducible changes occurred with the binding of 125I-labelled IGF-I to IGFBP-24 and IGFBP-30 fractions. These results confirm the increase in the binding capacity of IGFBPs reported in diabetic animals. They also show that the increase in IGF-I binding to each IGFBP fraction is regulated by a different mechanism; whereas protein glycation induces changes in IGFBP-40, this mechanism does not affect the binding properties of the other two IGFBPs. The increased binding of IGFBP might affect the availability of free IGF-I, and the consequent alterations in IGF-I-dependent metabolic processes could explain the role of this growth factor in the pathogenesis of chronic complications of diabetes.