Abstract
Objective: The VFA Committee was established within the Japan Society of Ningen Dock with the objective of gaining approval for VFA measurement by the dual impedance method (DS-VFA) to be substituted for abdominal circumference measurement in Specific Health Checkups, similar to the case of VFA measurement by CT.
Methods: With the cooperation of several Japan Society of Ningen Dock-affiliated facilities that have been actively adopting DS-VFA, we collected large amounts data and used it to conduct a cross-sectional analysis as well as a longitudinal analysis on repeated measurements.
Results: We observed significant correlations between changes in metabolic syndrome-related factors or changes in numbers of atherosclerotic vascular lesion risk factors and changes in DS-VFA for all items. ROC curve analysis also demonstrated that DS-VFA was a useful examination with regard to atherosclerotic vascular disease risk factors and metabolic syndrome. In addition, it was considered necessary to set DS-VA standard ranges separately for men and women because the cutoff value for women would be lower. Further, in a previous study, the application of DS-VFA to VFA measurement produced similar results to those with CT, which also proves the validity of using DS-VFA as a standard examination.
Conclusion: The present study demonstrated the usefulness of DS-VFA as a screening tool in strategies against lifestyle diseases and metabolic syndrome as well as the significance of repeated measurement.
