Pediatric Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions, and by 2012, more than one third of American children were overweight or obese. As a result, increasingly, children are developing complications of obesity including liver disease. In fact, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is the most common form of chronic liver disease seen in children today. Recently, there has been a burgeoning literature examining the pathogenesis, genetic markers, and role of the microbiome in this disease. On the clinical front, new modalities of diagnosing hepatic steatosis and hepatic fibrosis are being developed to provide non-invasive methods of surveillance in children. Lastly, the mainstay of treatment of pediatric non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has been largely through lifestyle interventions, namely, dieting and exercise. Currently, there are a number of clinical trials examining novel lifestyle and drug therapies for NAFLD that are registered with the US National Institutes of Health ClinicalTrials.gov website.