Prevalence of the metabolic syndrome using the Third Report of the National Cholesterol Educational Program Expert Panel on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults (ATP III) and the modified ATP III definitions for Japanese and Mongolians.

Background: A clustering of insulin resistance, hypertension, and dyslipidemia has been labeled as metabolic syndrome. Asians have a lower frequency of obesity than do Caucasians but have an increasing tendency toward metabolic syndrome.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study of individuals aged 30-60 years. We analyzed the health data of 596 Japanese and Mongolians for metabolic syndrome based on the Third Report of the National Cholesterol Educational Program Expert Panel on Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Cholesterol in Adults (ATP III) definition and the three modified ATP III definitions.

Results: The prevalence of metabolic syndrome using ATP III criteria was 6% for the Japanese and 12% for the Mongolians, a remarkable lower prevalence relative to the reported prevalence in the United States. With the exception of visceral obesity, the prevalences of individual metabolic abnormalities within each of the two Asian groups were similar to each other and to reported rates of prevalence in the United States.

Conclusions: A universal metabolic syndrome definition is inappropriate for comparisons of metabolic syndrome among Asian ethnic groups. We believe that the ATP III index for visceral obesity should be adjusted for Asian populations.