Triglyceride Glucose-Body Mass Index and Risk of Incident Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Japanese People With Normal Glycemic Level: A Population-Based Longitudinal Cohort Study

BACKGROUND: It has been proved that triglyceride glucose-body mass index (TyG-BMI) is a readily available and clinically significant indicator of insulin resistance (IR). Nevertheless, the association between TyG-BMI and incident Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) remains uncertain. This study aimed to study the relationship between TyG-BMI and T2DM and explore the predictive characteristics of TyG-BMI. METHODS: Our study was conducted as a longitudinal cohort study. 8,430 men and 7,034 women were enrolled and analyzed. They were both non-diabetic subjects with normal glycemic levels. Follow-up lasted for 13 years, from 1994 to 2016. To make the number of TyG-BMI in each group similar, the subjects were divided into four groups with 3866 subjects in each group. RESULTS: During the 13-year follow-up period, 373 subjects were diagnosed with incident T2DM. Our multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that TyG-BMI was an independent predictor of incident T2DM. In addition, our research identified four specific groups, young people (18-44 years old), women, the non-hypertensive population and non-drinkers were at significantly higher risk of developing TyG-BMI-related diabetes (P-interaction< 0.05). The best threshold TyG-BMI for predicting incident T2DM was 197.2987 (area under the curve 0.7738). CONCLUSIONS: Our longitudinal cohort study demonstrated the positive correlation between baseline TyG-BMI and risk of incident T2DM in Japanese with normal glycemic levels, and this risk was significantly higher in the young people, women, the non-hypertensive population and non-drinkers.