Prediction model for the onset risk of impaired fasting glucose: a 10-year longitudinal retrospective cohort health check-up study

Background Impaired fasting glucose (IFG) is a prediabetic condition. Considering that the clinical symptoms of IFG are inconspicuous, these tend to be easily ignored by individuals, leading to conversion to diabetes mellitus (DM). In this study, we established a prediction model for the onset risk of IFG in the Chongqing health check-up population to provide a reference for prevention in a health check-up cohort. Methods We conducted a retrospective longitudinal cohort study in Chongqing, China from January 2009 to December 2019. The qualified subjects were more than 20 years old and had more than two health check-ups. After following the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the cohort population was randomly divided into a training set and a test set at a ratio of 7:3. We first selected the predictor variables through the univariate generalized estimation equation (GEE), and then the training set was used to establish the IFG risk model based on multivariate GEE. Finally, the sensitivity, specificity, and receiver operating characteristic curves were used to verify the performance of the model. Results A total of 4,926 subjects were included in this study, with an average of 3.87 check-up records, including 2,634 males and 2,292 females. There were 442 IFG cases during the follow-up period, including 286 men and 156 women. The incidence density was 26.88/1000 person-years for men and 18.53/1000 person-years for women (P<0.001). The predictor variables of our prediction model include male (relative risk (RR) =1.422, 95 % confidence interval (CI): 0.923-2.193, P=0.3849), age (RR=1.030, 95 %CI: 1.016-1.044, P<0.0001), waist circumference (RR=1.005, 95 %CI: 0.999-1.012, P=0.0975), systolic blood pressure (RR=1.004, 95 %CI: 0.993-1.016, P=0.4712), diastolic blood pressure (RR=1.023, 95 %CI: 1.005-1.041, P=0.0106), obesity (RR=1.797, 95 %CI: 1.126-2.867, P=0.0140), triglycerides (RR=1.107, 95 %CI: 0.943-1.299, P=0.2127), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (RR=0.992, 95 %CI: 0.476-2.063, P=0.9818), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (RR=1.793, 95 %CI: 1.085-2.963, P=0.0228), blood urea (RR=1.142, 95 %CI: 1.022-1.276, P=0.0192), serum uric acid (RR=1.004, 95 %CI: 1.002-1.005, P=0.0003), total cholesterol (RR=0.674, 95 %CI: 0.403-1.128, P=0.1331), and serum creatinine levels (RR=0.960, 95 %CI: 0.945-0.976, P<0.0001). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) in the training set was 0.740 (95 %CI: 0.712-0.768), and the AUC in the test set was 0.751 (95 %CI: 0.714-0.817). Conclusions The prediction model for the onset risk of IFG had good predictive ability in the health check-up cohort.