Association of C-reactive protein-triglyceride glucose index with the incidence and mortality of cardiovascular disease: a retrospective cohort study

The C-reactive protein-triglyceride-glucose index (CTI) has emerged as an innovative composite marker for evaluating metabolic-inflammatory dysregulation, integrating markers of insulin resistance and systemic inflammation. However, the association between CTI and cardiovascular disease (CVD) or its mortality has rarely been studied. This study sought to examine CTI's associations with CVD mortality, CVD incidence, and all-cause mortality.

This study included 8,679 adults from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2001-2010, 2015-2018. The CTI was derived as: 0.412* Ln (CRP [mg/L]) + Ln (TG [mg/dl] × FPG [mg/dl])/2, with participants categorized into quartiles. We employed Kaplan-Meier curves, cox proportional hazards model, logistic regression analyses, and restricted cubic spline (RCS) to evaluate CTI's associations with CVD mortality, total CVD incidence, and all-cause mortality across sex-stratified, age-specific, and glycemic subgroups.