A low-glycemic-load versus low-fat diet in the treatment of fatty liver in obese children.

Background: Fatty liver is highly prevalent among obese children and represents a major risk factor for chronic liver diseases and severe metabolic complications.

Methods: We randomly assigned 17 obese children 8-17 years of age with fatty liver to either an experimental low-glycemic-load or conventional low-fat diet for 6 months. Participants in both groups received nutrition education and behavioral counseling of equal intensity.

A paradoxical signal intensity increase in fatty livers using opposed-phase gradient echo imaging with fat-suppression pulses.

With the increase in obese and overweight children, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease has become more prevalent in the pediatric population. Appreciating subtleties of magnetic resonance (MR) signal intensity behavior from fatty livers under different imaging conditions thus becomes important to pediatric radiologists. We report an initially confusing signal behavior-increased signal from fatty livers when fat-suppression pulses are applied in an opposed-phase gradient echo imaging sequence-and seek to explain the physical mechanisms for this paradoxical signal intensity behavior.

Effect of a high-fat meal on the growth hormone response to exercise in children.

Exercise-induced growth hormone (GH) secretion may significantly modulate growth and development in children. Altered physiological GH responses, therefore, may reduce the beneficial effects of exercise. High-fat food ingestion before exercise blunts the GH response in adults, but it is unknown whether this occurs in children.