Considerable disagreement among definitions of metabolic syndrome for Japanese

The purpose of the present study is to examine the agreement of various existing definitions of metabolic syndrome for Japanese.

One hundred thirty-two apparently healthy men and 147 apparently healthy women underwent testing and diagnosis for metabolic syndrome using 5 different definitions of metabolic syndrome for Japanese, including a newly proposed definition: a modified National Cholesterol Education Program definition replacing abdominal obesity with C-reactive protein. The agreement of these various definitions of metabolic syndrome was studied using an agreement index defined as the number of subjects who met both definitions divided by the number of subjects who met either of the 2 definitions. Agreement indices among these various definitions of metabolic syndrome for Japanese were between 0.19 and 0.6 in men and between 0.31 and 0.89 in women. The average agreement index was 0.41 in men and 0.51 in women, and the overall agreement index was 0.15 in men and 0.21 in women.

There was considerable disagreement among various definitions of metabolic syndrome for Japanese. Therefore, diagnosis with this syndrome should not be made until a truly consensual definition of metabolic syndrome can be established.