Association between indicators of visceral lipid accumulation and infertility: a cross-sectional study based on U.S. women

Abstract

Background Evidence on the association between visceral lipid accumulation and infertility remains limited and controversial. Therefore, the current investigation is the first investigation to unveil this correlation by utilizing novel indicators of visceral lipid accumulation. Methods The present study utilized the NHANES 2013–2020 dataset. Researchers utilized multiple logistic regression, smoothed curve fitting, and subgroup analysis to investigate the associations of waist circumference (WC), metabolic score for visceral fat (METS-VF), lipid accumulation product (LAP), visceral adiposity index (VAI) with infertility. Additionally, the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) algorithm model was utilized to evaluate the relative importance of the factors. Results After adjusting for potential factors that could influence the results, researchers discovered that all these four indicators of visceral lipid accumulation exhibited strong positive correlations with the probability of infertility. The subgroup analysis demonstrated that the correlations remained consistent in the majority of subgroups (P for interaction > 0.05). The results of XGBoost algorithm model indicate that METS-VF is the most meaningful factor in infertility. The ROC curve research revealed that while METS-VF had the greatest AUC values, there was no variation in the AUC value of different markers of visceral fat accumulation (P > 0.05). Conclusions The present investigation discovered that increased WC, METS-VF, LAP, and VAI were associated with a heightened prevalence of infertility.