1 out of 10 children gets fatty liver disease

NEW YORK (WABC) -- Where does all that food go when you overeat and get fat? Some of it piles up in the liver, causing a condition called fatty liver.

With the obesity epidemic, fatty liver is now showing up in kids.

One in 10 children, seven million in the U.S. is estimated to have fatty liver, a condition that can lead to cirrhosis with liver scarring, and without a transplant, death.

40% of obese kids have it, but the illness is also growing in normal weight children.

It was under the radar, but is now becoming a growing public health problem.)

"A turkey sandwich and this and that, but I would try to choose it without mayo," said Edison Arreaga, 16 years old.

It's a healthy lunch for 16-year-old Edison Arreaga.

"So the fruit would be dessert rather than something with a lot of calories in it," Arreaga said.

He's in good shape now, but that wasn't the case after he arrived here from Ecuador at age six.

"The food was so accessible, and when I got here I was thin, but then I got chubby and bigger and bigger," Arreaga said.

That excess weight lead to fatty liver.

"The risk of fatty liver increases with age and with weight so that the heavier you are the more likely you are to have fatty liver disease," said Dr. Bryan Rudolph, of Children's Hospital at Montefiore.

As Edison got heavier, his liver stored the fat and turned from brown-red in color to yellow-grey.

Scarring and cirrhosis can follow, and then complete liver failure, and needing a transplant for a patient to survive.

If the increasing trend in childhood fatty liver disease is not reversed, there could be a need for upwards of a million liver transplants needed over the next several decades.

That's a health crisis as there most likely will not be enough livers to transplant. Edison cut down his risk by eating healthily and he exercised.

"I found a passion, soccer," Arreaga said.

He's dropped the excess weight, and Dr. Rudolph says his liver has healed. It's back to normal. He's one of the lucky ones.

"Some kids will progress to end stage liver disease, and others will be able to live with some fat in their liver and be perfectly fine, but I can't tell you what kid will go in which direction," Dr. Rudolph said.

Genetics and race play a role in who will get fatty liver, Hispanics are more likely, African Americans are less.

Right now, fatty liver is the third most common reason for liver transplant, after alcoholism and hepatitis C. By 2030, it's expected to be number one.

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children health, childhood obesity, obesity, health news, dr. jay adlersberg

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