November 12, 2013

A recent study from Dr. Longjian Liu, (right) an associate professor at the Drexel University School of Public Health, and Japanese researchers, finds that an estimate of 13.3% and 44% of the excess cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality for Americans could be explained by the significantly higher prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MS) and MS plus the prevalence of CVD morbidity than that in Japan. The paper discussing the study, titled the “Impact of Metabolic Syndrome on the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Mortality in the United States and in Japan,” was published in the American Journal of Cardiology.

This study, led by Dr. Liu and Dr. Katsuyuki Miura, a professor and director of the Center for Epidemiologic Research in Asia at Shiga University of Medical Science in Otsu, Japan, is the first to quantitatively identify and compare risk factors for the excess CVD mortality in the United States versus Japan. The US has a higher prevalence of MS and CVD mortality than Japan, but it is unknown how much of the difference in MS accounts for the mortality difference. The aim of the study was to examine the impact of MS on the excess CVD mortality in the United States compared with that in Japan.

“Findings from this international comparative study offer new insights into the strategies of CVD risk reduction in the two countries. The study could also prove very informative for other nations, because they may share the same CVD risk factors, and these individual components of MS are highly preventable,” said Dr. Liu.

MS is a cluster of multiple CVD risk factors of obesity, high blood pressure, elevated serum sugar and dyslipidemia. CVD is the leading cause of death in all industrialized countries. MS has been identified as a risk for CVD. Although the US has a higher prevalence of MS than Japan, it is unknown how much of the difference in MS accounts for the mortality difference. Dr. Liu, Dr. Miura and their colleagues analyzed two nationally representative datasets, one from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (n = 12,561), and the other from the Japanese National Integrated Project for Prospective Observation of Noncommunicable Disease and Its Trends in Aged (n=7,453).