Association of triglyceride glucose and obesity indices with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in US adults: data from 2013 to 2018 NHANES

• Published in: BMC pulmonary medicine Vol. 25; no. 1; pp. 268 - 11
• Main Authors: Chen, Jinzhan, Chen, Ayun, Yang, Shuwen, Zhang, Fuhan, Jiang, Hongni, Liu, Jiaxin, Xie, Congyi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central Ltd 28.05.2025; BioMed Central; BMC
• Subjects: Adult; Age; Aged; Analysis; Angina pectoris; Atherosclerosis; Blood Glucose - analysis; Blood Glucose - metabolism; Blood pressure; Body Mass Index; Cardiovascular disease; Care and treatment; Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; Complications and side effects; Cross-Sectional Studies; Demographic aspects; Development and progression; Dextrose; Diabetes; Diagnosis; Exercise; Fasting; Female; Forecasts and trends; Glucose; Health aspects; Heart attacks; Heart failure; Humans; Hypertension; Hypotheses; Insulin Resistance; Logistic Models; Longitudinal studies; Lung diseases; Lung diseases, Obstructive; Male; Measurement; Medical laboratories; Metabolism; Middle Aged; NHANES; Nutrition Surveys; Obesity; Obesity - blood; Obesity - complications; Obesity - epidemiology; Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive - blood; Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive - epidemiology; Questionnaires; Recreation; ROC Curve; Self report; Smoking; Time trends (Statistics); Triglyceride glucose; Triglyceride glucose-body mass index; Triglyceride glucose-waist circumference; Triglyceride glucose-waist height ratio; Triglycerides; Triglycerides - blood; United States - epidemiology; Variables; Waist Circumference; Waist-Height Ratio; United States; United States > US; Triglyceride glucose-body mass index; Triglyceride glucose-waist circumference; Triglyceride glucose; Triglyceride glucose-waist height ratio; Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; NHANES
• ISSN: 1471-2466; 1471-2466
• DOI: 10.1186/s12890-025-03738-2

The impact of insulin resistance (IR) on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has caught increasing attention, and the triglyceride-glucose (TyG) index and related indices are deemed reliable indicators for evaluating IR. Nevertheless, the potential associations of TyG and obesity-related indexes with COPD are currently understudied. Hence, this paper was to inspect the links of TyG and obesity-related indices with COPD. This was a cross-sectional study based on data from the NHANES 2013-2018. Weighted logistic regression (WLR), restricted cubic sample (RCS), and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were leveraged to examine the links of the TyG index and obesity indices with COPD. The stability of the correlations was also assessed via subgroup analyses. Data from 6383 participants were finally included, including 583 patients with COPD. WLR discovered positive associations of TyG, TyG-body mass index (TyG-BMI), TyG-waist circumference (TyG-WC), and TyG-waist height ratio (TyG-WHtR) with COPD regardless of covariate adjustment (p-value < 0.05, p for trend test < 0.05). After adjusting for all confounders, RCS analysis signaled notable linear links of TyG and obesity-related indices with COPD (p-value < 0.05, p for nonlinear > 0.05). TyG-WHtR showed the highest association with COPD among the indices tested, albeit with limited discriminative ability (AUC = 0.643, 95% CI: 0.619 ~ 0.665). Subgroup analyses further validated the stability and reliability of the results. TyG and its combination with obesity-related indicators are associated with COPD. Among these, TyG-WHtR showed the strongest association with COPD, although causal relationships cannot be inferred and its discriminative ability remained modest. Further prospective studies are warranted to validate these findings. Not applicable.