Editorial

Abstract

The current growths in economic and social development in Thailand have led to improvements in living conditions, nutritional level and the standard of public health. Medical advances, including the expansion of antibiotics and discovery of new vaccines, have contributed to mortality decline worldwide. These affected the epidemiological transition of the disease patterns. The major health problems were evolved from communicable disease to non-communicable disease, increasing due to culture, life styles and behavior changes in modernization era. In Thailand, although communicable diseases still dominate morbidity, the non-communicable morbidity is steadily rising, such as, DM, hypertension and metabolic syndrome. The metabolic syndrome in Thai climacteric women was investigated and published in this issue: “Mammographic density and metabolic syndrome in climacteric women” by Kankoon M, et al. Interestingly, the prevalence of metabolic syndrome in this study was 20.48%.