ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition and Metabolism
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1685618
The Clínica Universidad de Navarra-Body Adiposity Estimator index is a reliable tool for prediabetes: a multi-center retrospective cohort study
Provisionally accepted
- Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, China
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Objective: Given the close link between body fat and insulin resistance, our study aimed to evaluate the association and predictive value of the Clínica Universidad de Navarra Body Adiposity Estimator (CUN-BAE) in identifying the risk of prediabetes. Methods: This multi-center retrospective cohort study included 112,708 participants from 32 regions across 11 cities in China. Multivariable Cox regression and restricted cubic spline (RCS) analyses were used to assess the association between CUN-BAE and prediabetes risk. Predictive effectiveness was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Results: An independent association of CUN-BAE with prediabetes was significantly shown after adjusting for important covariates. CUN-BAE is nonlinearly positively correlated with prediabetes. In the male subgroup analysis, higher triglyceride levels or hypertension in combination with CUN-BAE significantly increased the incidence of prediabetes (interaction P < 0.05 for both). In the female subgroup analysis, middle age, BMI > 28, higher triglyceride levels, or hypertension in combination with CUN-BAE significantly increased the incidence of prediabetes (interaction P < 0.05 for all). ROC analysis demonstrated that CUN-BAE performed better in predicting risk than BMI, TG/HDL-c and TyG. Conclusions: The CUN-BAE index was independently and nonlinearly positively associated with an increased risk of prediabetes and exhibited high predictive accuracy.
Keywords: prediabetes, CUN-BAE, Chinese adults, BMI, body fat
Received: 14 Aug 2025; Accepted: 08 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ma, Wang and Wang. 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: Ru Wang, wangru@sus.edu.cn
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