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VIDEO: NASH prevalence increases fourfold among adolescents

BOSTON — In this exclusive video at The Liver Meeting, Naim Alkhouri, MD, a hepatologist from the Cleveland Clinic, discusses the increasing prevalence of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis and advanced fibrosis among adolescents in the U.S., which has quadrupled since 1988.

“These findings should highlight the burden of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in U.S. adolescents and help us develop screening algorithms and hopefully identify these diseases before they progress to liver cirrhosis,” Alkhouri said.

Alkhouri and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional study using data from the National Health and Examination Survey of adolescents aged 12 to 18 years. They found that NASH increased from 0.74% between 1988 and 1994 to 3.1% between 1994 and 2004 and 3.4% between 2005 and 2010. They also found the prevalence of NAFLD increased over each period.

“NASH, the aggressive form of fatty liver disease, now affects about 3% of U.S. adolescents and this rate has increased fourfold,” Alkhouri said

The researchers also looked at the rate of advanced fibrosis and did not find any increasing trends.

“Luckily, this was not very common but we found in the later years it affects about 0.2% of U.S. adolescents,” Alkhouri said.

Alkhouri said one of the most alarming points of the study was the rate of NASH and advanced fibrosis among Mexican-American adolescents. Up to 5% of Mexican-American adolescents were affected by NAFLD and 1.4% affected by advanced fibrosis.

Reference:

Selvakumar P, et al. Abstract 202. Presented at: The Liver Meeting; Nov. 11-15, 2016; Boston.

Disclosure: Alkhouri reports no relevant financial disclosures to the study. Alkhouri does report financial relationships with AbbVie, Alexion, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Gilead Sciences and Intercept Pharmaceuticals.