ArticleEnvironmental health and preventive medicine2026
Geographic variation in proportions meeting the waist circumference criterion and having elevated hemoglobin A1c among Specific Health Checkup examinees in Japan: an ecological analysis of the 10th NDB Open Data.
Article in Environmental health and preventive medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPublicly available aggregate health data can support regional surveillance of cardiometabolic risk, but analyses must address aggregation, ecological inference, and cell suppression or unavailability. Waist circumference and body mass index (BMI) capture related but distinct aspects of adiposity. We evaluated the usefulness and limitations of selected 10th National Database (NDB) Open Data indicators for prefecture-level cardiometabolic surveillance among Specific Health Checkup examinees in Japan.
methodsWe conducted an ecological descriptive analysis of the 10th NDB Open Data. Data were analyzed by prefecture, sex, and 5-year age band among examinees aged 40-74 years. Primary indicators were the percentage meeting the waist circumference criterion (≥85 cm in men, ≥90 cm in women) and the percentage with hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) ≥6.5%; BMI categories were examined as exploratory indicators. Prefecture-level percentages were internally age-standardized within sex using the age distribution of publicly displayed examinee counts pooled across prefectures for each indicator as the internal standard. Cells displayed as "-" were treated as suppressed/unavailable and not as zero values.
resultsWaist circumference criterion data were complete across prefectures, sexes, and age bands. HbA1c ≥6.5% data were complete among men but included suppressed/unavailable cells among women, and BMI indicators had substantial cell suppression/unavailability. The age-standardized percentage meeting the waist circumference criterion ranged from 45.5% in Niigata to 60.6% in Okinawa among men and from 13.7% in Kyoto to 24.0% in Okinawa among women. HbA1c ≥6.5% ranged from 8.3% in Nagano to 11.3% in Miyagi among men and from 3.9% in Kanagawa to 7.8% in Saga among women. Okinawa had the highest percentage meeting the waist circumference criterion in both sexes. Waist-HbA1c correlations were positive in available-cell analyses, but estimates among women and estimates involving BMI were sensitive to cell availability and the prefectures included in the analysis.
conclusionsThe percentage meeting the waist circumference criterion was the most complete and robust descriptive indicator for prefecture-level cardiometabolic surveillance using the 10th NDB Open Data. HbA1c analyses among women and BMI-based analyses require suppression-aware interpretation. Ecological correlations should be interpreted as descriptive co-patterning of aggregate surveillance indicators, not as individual-level associations or evidence of regional determinants.
trial registrationNot applicable.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.