OBJECTIVES: There is evidence that dyslipidemia in diabetes is related to microvascular disease complications. We explored the association between plasma triglycerides (TG) and high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol with microvascular disease in Malaysian diabetics.  METHODS: We utilised data from the National Diabetes Registry of patients being followed up in Malaysian public sector primary care clinics in year 2012. Outcomes of interest were the presence of microvascular complications, namely retinopathy or nephropathy. Logistic regression was performed to explore the odds of microvascular complications with higher triglycerides (TG) and HDL levels, controlling for other risk factors available in NDR data namely HbA1c, duration of diabetes, hypertension and the use of statins.  RESULTS: A total of 110,220 patients with diabetes were included in the study. The mean age of patients was 62.36 years and 16,795 (15.2%) patients had either nephropathy or retinopathy. In patients with either nephropathy or retinopathy, the mean plasma TG and HDL-cholesterol were 1.90 mmol/L and 1.27 mmol/L, respectively. Higher TG (>1.7 mmol/L) and lower HDL (≤ 1.1mmol/L) levels were found to be significantly associated with the presence of nephropathy (adj. OR 1.21; p<0.001 and adj. OR 1.29; p<0.001, respectively) but not the presence of retinopathy (adj. OR 1.01; p<0.652 and adj. OR 1.00; p<0.896, respectively).  CONCLUSIONS: As has been shown in other studies, our analysis indicates that nephropathy was associated with higher plasma TG and lower HDL levels in this patient population. However, no association was found with retinopathy.