Metabolic Syndrome Linked to Liver Disease in Obese Teen Males

Researchers studying a large sample of adolescent American boys have found an association between metabolic syndrome and elevated liver enzymes that mark potentially serious liver disease. The study appears in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition.

The link between metabolic syndrome and the suspected liver disease did not appear in adolescent girls, says study leader Rose C. Graham, MD, a pediatric gastroenterologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. There were ethnic differences among the boys as well, she adds, between Hispanic and non-Hispanic males.

In adults, researchers have shown an association between metabolic syndrome and a group of diseases called nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which at its most severe, may progress to irreversible liver damage. The purpose of the current study was to investigate to what extent metabolic syndrome in adolescents was associated with elevated levels of the liver enzyme alanine aminotransferase (ALT), a marker of NAFLD.

Graham and colleagues analyzed a nationally representative sample of 1,323 U.S. adolescents, aged 12 to 19, from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. They found a strong association between metabolic syndrome and elevated ALT levels in adolescent males, but not in adolescent females.

While looking more carefully at this association in boys, they found that among Hispanic males, this association largely coincided with being obese, as measured by body mass index. The researchers expected to find this correlation, because for all ethnicities, obesity was already known to be a risk factor for both metabolic syndrome and NAFLD. However, they also found that among non-Hispanic adolescent boys, metabolic syndrome and high ALT levels were associated with each other, independent of obesity. “Something else seems to be going on, in addition to the effects of obesity,” says Graham. “Some unknown factors may be at work here.”

The finding may have implications for treatment, she adds. Currently, the only known treatment for NAFLD is weight loss. “If some adolescents with metabolic syndrome may be susceptible to this liver disease regardless of whether or not they are obese, there may be other treatments yet to be discovered.”

Source: Children's Hospital of Philadelphia