Association between the triglyceride–glucose index and the incidence risk of heart failure: A nationwide cohort study

Background and aim: We investigated whether the Triglyceride–Glucose (TyG) Index is associated with the incidence risk of heart failure (HF) in a longitudinal setting in the general population. Methods and results: The study used data from the national health screening cohort database of South Korea from 2002 to 2019. The TyG index was calculated as a time-dependent covariate or the average value of at least three measurements throughout the follow-up period. The outcome of interest was incident HF. A total of 293,966 individuals were included in this study. During a median 9.58 years, 27,852 individuals (9.47 %) were diagnosed with HF. Considering a multivariable time-dependent Cox proportional hazards model, a per-unit increase in TyG index significantly increased the risk of HF in the entire cohort (hazard ratio [HR], 1.044; 95 % confidence interval [CI], 1.022–1.067), diabetes mellitus (DM) subcohort (HR, 1.054; 95 % CI, 1.013–1.097), and non-DM subcohort (HR, 1.041; 95 % CI, 1.015–1.068). Compared to the lowest quartile, the highest quartile was positively associated with the incidence risk of HF, with an accompanying significant P-value for the trend (HR, 1.118; 95 % CI, 1.077–1.160 in the entire cohort) Conclusion: Our study demonstrates that a repeatedly measured TyG index is associated with the incidence risk of HF.