A recent study from Dr. Longjian Liu, an associate professor at the Drexel University School of Public Health, and Japanese researchers, finds that an estimate of between 13.3 percent and 44 percent of the excess cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality for Americans could be explained by the significantly higher prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MS) and MS plus the prevalence of CVD morbidity than that in Japan. The paper discussing the study, titled the “Impact of Metabolic Syndrome on the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Mortality in the United States and in Japan,” was published in the American Journal of Cardiology.