Obesity: a cause of steatohepatitis in children

TO THE EDITOR: Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, which is a chronic liver disease with varying clinical manifestations, occurs commonly in adults with obesity, hyperlipidemia, or type II diabetes. Although it usually has a benign course, it may progress to cirrhosis (1). Mathiesen et al. (2) evaluated 150 asymptomatic adult patients with slightly and moderately increased liver transaminases and found that 40% of the patients had liver steatosis and most of them were obese, besides various etiologies. Steatohepatitis is rarely described in children. We have encountered five obese children with steatohepatitis diagnosed by means of ultrasonography incidentally.