Amy Goss, Ph.D., assistant professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of Nutrition Sciences, has received a $3 million R01 grant to implement a family-based diet intervention to treat fatty liver disease and obesity in adolescents.
With increasing prevalence of childhood obesity, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease has emerged as the most common cause of liver disease among children and adolescents in industrialized countries. For children and adolescents ages 2 to 19, the prevalence of obesity has reached 17 percent and affects nearly 13 million children in the United States.
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease refers to a spectrum of liver diseases ranging from simple fat infiltration to non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, fibrosis and cirrhosis.