Abstract
Background The Japan Society for the Study of Obesity originally proposed a cutoff value of >100 cm2 for the intra-abdominal fat area (IFA) as a definition for "visceral fat obesity" in Japanese adults. There are no studies on the cutoff or target values after weight reduction in pre- and post-menopausal women. Methods and Results In the present study 149 pre-menopausal obese women (PreM, 43.3 years, 27.3 kg/m2) and 58 post-menopausal women (PostM, 53.9 years, 27.7 kg/m2) participated in a 14-week weight reduction program. The IFA was measured by computed tomography. The program induced significant reductions in body weight (8.6 kg in PreM and 7.8 kg in PostM). The IFA decreased significantly from 80.4±41.3 to 50.7±23.8 (PreM) and from 115.4±38.0 to 75.7±30.5 (PostM). Conclusions The receiver-operating characteristic curve analyses revealed that the appropriate cutoff values were 80 cm2 (PreM) and 110 cm2 (PostM) before the program, and after the program the appropriate target values were determined as 60 and 70 cm2, respectively. (Circ J 2006; 70: 110 - 114)
