C-reactive protein-triglyceride glucose index as a risk factor for all-cause and cardiovascular mortality among individuals with diabetes or prediabetes: An observational study based on evidence from NHANES 2003–2008

Objectives: Cardiovascular disease is the major origin of mortality. Our analysis aimed to evaluate the correlation between C-reactive protein-triglyceride glucose index (CTI) and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in a population with diabetes or prediabetes. Methods: A total of 5415 subjects with prediabetes or diabetes were recruited from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003–2008. CTI was calculated as 0.412 × ln(C-reactive protein) + lntriglycerides (mg/dL) × fasting plasma glucose (mg/dL)/2. Cox regression was conducted to analyze the association between CTI and outcomes. The outcomes were set as all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality. Results: With a follow-up of 37,932 person-years, 913 (16.86%) were deceased and 317 (5.85%) died due to cardiovascular diseases. Kaplan–Meier curve depicted that the top quartile had the lowest survival rates (all log-rank P < 0.05). After full adjustment, each standard deviation increase in CTI cast a 44.6% additional risk of all-cause mortality together with a 39.5% additional risk of cardiovascular mortality. Furthermore, both cardiovascular and all-cause mortality risks elevated proportionally along with the increment of CTI value. Finally, receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that CTI alone had a moderate value to forecast both cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. Conclusion: Our analysis exhibited significant and linear correlations between CTI and the incident cardiovascular and all-cause mortality, implicating the potential usefulness of CTI in identifying both cardiovascular and all-cause mortality among the diabetic or prediabetic population.