Prognostic value of the TyG index for in-hospital mortality in nondiabetic COVID-19 patients with myocardial injury

ABSTRACT

SUMMARY OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to explore the efficacy of the triglyceride glucose (TyG) index on in-hospital mortality in nondiabetic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients with myocardial injury. METHODS: This was a retrospective study, which included 218 nondiabetic COVID-19 patients who had myocardial injury. The TyG index was derived using the following equation log [serum triglycerides (mg/dL) ×fasting blood glucose (mg/dL)/2]. RESULTS: Overall, 49 (22.4%) patients died during hospitalization. Patients who did not survive had a higher TyG index than survivors. In multivariate Cox regression analysis, it was found that the TyG index was independently associated with in-hospital death. A TyG index cutoff value greater than 4.97 was predicted in-hospital death in nondiabetic COVID-19 patients with myocardial damage, with 82% sensitivity and 66% specificity. A pairwise evaluation of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves demonstrated that the TyG index (AUC 0.786) had higher discriminatory performance than both triglyceride (AUC 0.738) and fasting blood glucose (AUC 0.660) in predicting in-hospital mortality among these patients. CONCLUSIONS: The TyG index might be used to identify high-risk nondiabetic COVID-19 patients with myocardial damage.