Domenico Tricò, Sonia Caprio, Giuseppina Rosaria Umano, Bridget Pierpont, Jessica Nouws, Alfonso Galderisi, Grace Kim, Mariana M Mata, Nicola Santoro
AIMS: We conducted a prospective study in a large, multiethnic cohort of obese adolescents to characterize clinical and genetic features associated with pediatric Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver (NAFL), the most common cause of chronic liver disease in youth. METHODS: A total of 503 obese adolescents were enrolled, including 191 (38.0%) Caucasians, 134 (26.6%) African Americans, and 178 (35.4%) Hispanics. Participants underwent abdominal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to quantify hepatic fat content, an oral glucose tolerance test to assess glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, and the genotyping of three SNPs associated with fatty liver (PNPLA3 rs738409, GCKR rs1260326, and TM6SF2 rs58542926)...
April 17, 2018: Hepatology: Official Journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases