Objective <p>This study examined the potential correlation between chitinase-3-like protein-1 (CHI3L1) and sarcopenia in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). The findings aim to establish a preliminary foundation and valuable reference information for future studies in this area.</p> Methods <p>239 patients with T2DM were enrolled and categorized into groups based on their serum CHI3L1 tertiles. The study compared the incidence of sarcopenia in each group and systematically identified independent risk factors for sarcopenia using multivariate logistic regression analysis. A model was constructed to assess the relative risk of CHI3L1 for sarcopenia in patients with T2DM, and the predictive efficacy of CHI3L1 was analyzed using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and calibration curves.</p> Results <p>The results showed that the prevalence of sarcopenia in patients with T2DM was 13.81%. The study confidently found a significant correlation between higher serum CHI3L1 levels and increased prevalence of sarcopenia in patients with T2DM. Through multivariate logistic regression analysis, CHI3L1 was independently associated with the presence of sarcopenia in patients with T2DM. Additionally, ROC curve analysis demonstrated that CHI3L1 had good predictive efficacy for sarcopenia with an area under the ROC curve of 0.795 [0.707, 0.883].</p> Conclusion <p>In patients with T2DM, higher serum levels of CHI3L1 were significantly associated with an increased prevalence of sarcopenia.</p>