Minimum Waist and Visceral Fat Values for Identifying Japanese Americans at Risk for the Metabolic Syndrome

We appreciate Dr. Oda's (1) interest in our article (2) and his agreement with our concerns about the methodology used to define cut points for abnormal waist circumference at 90 cm for women and 85 cm for men in Japanese patients. Our report demonstrates that compared with these recommendations, a higher waist circumference cut point in men and a lower cut point in younger women better identifies presence of nonadipose metabolic syndrome components in Japanese Americans (2). Our study reports results of a cross-sectional study of optimal waist circumference cut points for classifying presence of nonadipose metabolic syndrome components. We believe …