Aims/IntroductionDyslipidemia is commonly present in type 2 diabetes mellitus patients. Recently, the triglyceride : high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol (TG/HDL‐C) ratio, a novel parameter of lipid abnormality, has been seen as an independent predictor for incident diabetes. However, the correlation of the TG/HDL‐C ratio with incident diabetes in the Chinese population and how this relationship is impacted by sex have been rarely studied. In the present study, the correlation of the TG/HDL‐C ratio with incident diabetes is investigated between different sexes of the Chinese population.Materials and MethodsA total of 116,855 participants who were free of diabetes at baseline were enrolled in the study. The participants were grouped by the median value (0.82) of the TG/HDL‐C ratio. Then, participants were further analyzed according to their sex. Cumulative incidence and person‐years incidence were used to express the incidence rate. The predictive value of the TG/HDL‐C ratio for incident diabetes was probed by the Cox regression proportional hazards model.ResultsThe mean age of the participants was 44.1 ± 12.9 years, and 53% of participants (n = 62,868) were the men. A total of 2,685 incident diabetes cases occurred during the 3.1 years of the median follow‐up period. The cumulative incidence in total incident diabetes patients, men and women was 2.30% (2.21–2.38%), 3.01% (2.87–3.14%) and 1.47% (1.37–1.57%), respectively. After the adjustment of multivariate factors, the multivariate Cox regression analysis results showed that a higher TG/HDL‐C ratio was the independent predictive factor of incident diabetes in men (hazard ratio 1.30, 95% confidence interval 1.03–1.64), compared with women (hazard ratio 0.85, 95% confidence interval 0.53–1.38).ConclusionsAmong the Chinese population, the TG/HDL‐C ratio is an independent predictor for incident diabetes in male patients.