Key words: childhood obesity, NAFLD, liver, metabolic aberrations, lifestyle

“Health aberrations in children with overweight and obesity: a special focus on the liver”

In clinical practice, severe non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), sometimes with advanced scarring of the liver, is already seen in children at an early age. This was the reason to investigate in this thesis which factors contribute to the development and worsening of NAFLD in overweight children. Among other things, the contribution of genetic predisposition, metabolic disorder and the role of the immune system were investigated.

Briefly, the results described in the dissertation show that a measure for liver damage is already high in 67% of children with obesity and a genetic predisposition to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). In addition, the results show that the factors that contribute to the development of liver fat are different from factors that aggravate the disease. These determining factors also depend on the genetic background of children.