Prevalence of Fatty Liver in Children and Adolescents

Fatty liver disease is diagnosed increasingly in children, but the prevalence remains unknown. We sought to determine the prevalence of pediatric fatty liver as diagnosed by histology in a population-based sample.

We conducted a retrospective review of 742 children between the ages of 2 and 19 years who had an autopsy performed by a county medical examiner from 1993 to 2003. Fatty liver was defined as > or = 5% of hepatocytes containing macrovesicular fat.