ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Clinical Diabetes
This article is part of the Research TopicMaternal Metabolic Health: From Preconception to PostpartumView all 21 articles
Fatty liver index in early pregnancy predicts the risk of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus
Provisionally accepted
- 1First Hospital of Qinhuangdao, Qinhuangdao, China
- 2Qinhuangdao Hospital for Maternal and Child Health, Qinhuangdao, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective: To examine the ability of the fatty liver index (FLI) in early pregnancy to predict the risk of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM). Methods: A total of 1,004 women underwent metabolism characterization at weeks 8–12 of gestation and a 75 g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) at weeks 24–28 of gestation. The participants were divided into the normal glucose tolerance (NGT, n = 816) and GDM (n = 188) groups according to the OGTT results. Pregnant women were divided into three tertiles according to their FLI scores in early pregnancy. Multivariable regression analysis was performed to estimate the independent relationship between FLI and GDM . Results: The FLI values of the GDM and NGT groups were 8.47 (5.26, 13.41) and 6.10 (3.90, 10.41), the differences were significant (P<0.001). The FLI values of the T1–T3 groups were 3.49 (2.74, 4.07), 6.43 (5.58, 7.51), and 14.46 (10.96, 21.58), respectively. The differences in homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA–IR), TyG, TG/HDL-C, LDL-C/HDL-C, TC/HDL-C, and ALT/AST between the T1–T3 groups were significant and gradually increased (P<0.001). The risk of GDM in pregnant women in the highest FLI tertile was 1.881 times greater than that in the lowest FLI tertile(OR = 1.881, 95% CI: 1.049–3.374, P = 0.034).The cut-off point of FLI for predicting the risk of GDM was 5.108. Compared with other three indicators, FLI has better sensitivity(77.7%), but the specificity was slightly lower(41.1%). Conclusion: The early pregnancy FLI is an independent risk factor for GDM. A high FLI is predictive of GDM risk.
Keywords: Fatty liver index, gestational diabetes, MAFLD, Predictive factor, TyG
Received: 04 Jul 2025; Accepted: 28 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Wei, Ma, Bai and Lu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Qiang Lu
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.