Utility of a specific health checkup database containing lifestyle behaviors and lifestyle diseases for employee health insurance in Japan

Background: The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare introduced Specific Health Checkups (SHC) to identify individuals at risk of metabolic syndrome (MS). This study aimed to describe the SHC database developed by the Japan Medical Data Center Co., Ltd. (JMDC) as a means of exploring lifestyle behaviors and lifestyle diseases among working generations. Methods: We conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional study of employees and their families using the JMDC-SHC database to describe the prevalence of lifestyle behaviors (smoking, exercise, dietary habits, drinking habits, and sleeping) and lifestyle diseases (MS, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and diabetes mellitus). Results were compared with data from the 2015 National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHNS) in Japan as a benchmark. Results: All 646,869 enrollees in the JMDC-SHC database were included, of whom 66.5% were men. Age ranged from 40–74 years. Compared with the results of the NHNS, the JMDC-SHC subjects were younger and had fewer MS components and a lower prevalence of diabetes and hypertension. Subjects in their 40s were most likely to have unhealthy lifestyle behaviors in all age groups (eg, smoking: 41.0% in men and 10.2% in women). The SHC group had more favorable behaviors overall, but underweight was more prevalent in the SHC females. Conclusions: The JMDC-SHC population showed different lifestyle and lifestyle disease profiles to the NHNS population, probably due to its different age, gender, and employment distributions. Development of healthcare policies and plans for working generations would benefit from the selection of an age-and employment-appropriate database.