Metabolic Syndrome in Japan and Initiatives of the Japanese Association of Rural Medicine

• Published in: Journal of Rural Medicine Vol. 5; no. 1; pp. 30 - 32
• Main Author: Hideomi Fujiwara
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Japanese
• Published: The Japanese Association of Rural Medicine 01-06-2010
• ISSN: 1880-487X

In Japan, the appellation of Metabolic Syndrome (MS) has been abbreviated to "Metabo" and is so common that it has been selected for a prize in the "Buzzwords of the Year" contest. However, despite a fair permeation of the points of awareness in the health of the people, it is difficult to say that there is sufficient understanding of the reality of the situation. The concept of multiple conditions like MS have been advocated one after the other since the latter half of the 80s such as "Syndrome X" and "The Deadly Quartet" as clinical conditions that have multiple risk factors for arteriosclerotic disease. The collective term for the concept of these clinical conditions is "Multiple Risk Factor Syndrome" and MS is the representative clinical condition concept of this. The diagnostic standard in Japan was created jointly in 2004 by 8 academic societies centered around the Japanese Society of Internal Medicine incorporating the 1999 WHO diagnostic standard with insulin resistance as the focus condition and the creation of the US NCEP standard in 2001 that focused on abdominal obesity. The characteristics of MS in Japan list the required conditions for patients to be diagnosed with MS as the accumulation of visceral fat (visceral obesity) as the central basis of this clinical condition and those who fulfill 2 or more of the 3 metabolic abnormality categories of lipid abnormality, blood-pressure abnormality and sugar metabolism abnormality.