2023-10-04 23:26:29
Fatty liver disease is a chronic disease that may eventually lead to a liver transplant. It was medically common for older people to suffer from it due to time factors and poor lifestyle choices. Usually, men who drank alcohol excessively were the most affected by it, but this has changed in the past. Recently, there has been an increase in the diagnosis of children infected with it.
According to the Washington Post, it was not common in previous generations to see children suffering from fatty liver disease, but something that scientists are still trying to figure out has changed in the current period.
Five deaths in the United States due to mysterious hepatitis in children. What is the disease?
According to Columbia University Irving Medical Center, fatty liver disease occurs when a large amount of fat accumulates in the liver and triggers an inflammatory process that injures liver cells. There are generally no symptoms, but as it progresses, fatty liver disease can interfere with vital liver functions.
The center explained that the disease is diagnosed by measuring the levels of an enzyme called ALT in the blood, which is a sign of liver damage. However, the inflammatory component is difficult to diagnose without a liver biopsy, so prevalence estimates are imprecise.
The disease is an increasing reason for liver transplantation and, in some cases, liver cancer.
The importance of the liver is that it makes countless proteins, maintains the body’s metabolism, and filters toxins from our blood. If it stops working, liver transplantation is the only treatment.
What is the reason for the spread of the disease among children in the United States?
Pediatricians across the United States began to report cases of children as young as 2 years old and during adolescence having clumps of fat cells in the liver at concentrations that should not normally be present. Some of these cases were too late, according to the newspaper.
She explained that in the past decades there have been only a few documented cases of fatty liver disease in children in the medical literature. But today, the disease affects millions, and researchers in the journal Clinical Liver Disease estimate that 5 to 10 percent of all children in the United States have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, making it as common as asthma.
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The newspaper quoted Samir Softik, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Kentucky Children’s Hospital who specializes in fatty liver disease, as saying, “This is the worst disease and we had never heard of it before.”
The rise in the number of children with fatty liver disease in the United States is unexpectedly rapid, according to a Washington Post analysis.
Data from 2017 to 2021 show big jumps in the incidence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease at all ages in the United States, but the steepest increase so far has been among children.
For children up to age 17, the diagnosis rate has doubled, according to insurance data analyzed by the newspaper.
Hospitalizations also rose, with more than 1 million patients, most of them adults, being treated in emergency rooms or admitted in 2020, according to a newspaper analysis of cases related to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. This represents a two-thirds increase from just four years ago.
Likewise, liver transplants have increased among teens and young adults, with a 25 percent increase over the past decade in children ages 11 to 17, according to data from the United Network for Organ Sharing. Organ transplants for young people aged 18 to 34 years have doubled in the past.
The disease spreads among all ethnic, social, economic and geographic groups, but the newspaper quoted some doctors as saying that children of Mexican origin, some Asian subgroups and those living in poverty are more affected.
Why does fatty liver affect children?
Fatty liver is not the only disease that has begun to attack, as several diseases have emerged that were previously seen almost exclusively as diseases for adults, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and even gallstones.
These trends reflect an environment in which more Americans face premature death. Life expectancy in the United States has declined in recent years, reaching 76.4 years in 2021, the lowest point in nearly two decades, according to government data, according to the newspaper.
The crisis is particularly exacerbated in the southeastern regions of the country, where childhood obesity rates are at their highest levels, but the newspaper explained that obesity is only part of the puzzle.
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She pointed out that scientists were surprised when they found that not all children who suffer from obesity suffer from fatty liver, and not all children who suffer from fatty liver disease are overweight.
Ironically, according to the newspaper, many studies have found that a large number of children with the most serious cases of fatty liver disease have a low body mass index, that is, they are underweight.
The wave of fatty liver disease in children has come so quickly that the medical community is scrambling to understand the disease’s causes, risk factors, screening, diagnosis, and management.
What are the possible treatments?
Doctors in the United States have expressed concern that there are no Food and Drug Administration-approved treatments, and that some promising interventions, such as new generation weight-loss drugs, are impossibly expensive and usually not covered by health insurance for fatty liver, according to the newspaper.
As countries in Europe, Latin America and beyond increase regulation, formulation and marketing of food additives, the newspaper explained that there is increasing pressure on the United States to do the same following years of faltering efforts.
A doctor takes a blood sample for testing as part of a campaign to combat hepatitis C
Irving Medical Center believes that maintaining a healthy weight by eating less processed foods and exercising regularly is the main way for children and adults to prevent non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
The website explained that there may also be a role for vitamin E, noting that there are studies on a specific type of vitamin E, D-alpha tocopherol, which is used to reduce liver inflammation and infection in children and adults with fatty liver disease, and has proven positive results.
This indicates that consuming the recommended amounts of vitamin E, an antioxidant, may prevent hepatitis.
Foods rich in vitamin E include spinach, tomatoes, avocados, some types of fish, nuts and seeds.
The center explained that vitamin E from nutritional supplements is absorbed differently from food, so it is not clear whether nutritional supplements can prevent hepatitis.
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