Abstract
BACKGROUND: Triglyceride and glucose (TyG) index and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) both bave been related to insulin resistance (IR). The study aimed to investigate the longitudinal relationship between TyG index and NAFLD and to evaluate the ability of TyG, through comparing with the predictive value of other indexes, to identify individuals at risk for NAFLD. METHODS: Four thousand and five hundred thirty nine subjects without NAFLD initially were followed up for 9 years. Cox regression models were used to analyze the risk factors of NAFLD. RESULTS: Cox regression analyses indicated the TyG index was independently and positively associated with the risk of incident NAFLD. In receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, the optimal cut-off level for TyG to predict incident NAFLD was 8.52 and the area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.76 (95% CI 0.74-0.77), which was larger than that of TG, ALT and FPG. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated that the elevation of the TyG index might predict increase risk for incident NAFLD and it may be suitable as a diagnostic criterion for NAFLD.