Prevalence of Pancreatic Steatosis at a Pediatric Tertiary Care Center.

OBJECTIVES: Pancreatic steatosis in adults has been proposed to be associated with obesity; however, data on pancreatic steatosis in children are lacking. Our study aimed to measure the prevalence of pancreatic steatosis in children and to examine its association with obesity and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. METHODS: This is a retrospective chart review study of 232 patients 2 to 18 years old who underwent abdominal computed tomographic imaging in the emergency department or inpatient ward within a 1-year time span and from whom demographics, anthropometrics, and medical history were obtained. Our radiologist determined mean Hounsfield unit (HU) measurements for the pancreas, liver, and spleen. A difference of -20 between the pancreas and spleen (psHU) and between the liver and spleen was used to determine fatty infiltration. RESULTS: Of the 232 patients, 11.5% had a psHU less than -20. The prevalence of pancreatic steatosis was more than double among obese children (19%) than that in nonobese groups (8%). There is a significant correlation between the psHU and liver-spleen HU (r = 0.50, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Pancreatic steatosis was identified in 10% of the study population and is associated with obesity. Also, pancreatic steatosis is significantly associated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. This is the first study assessing the prevalence of pancreatic steatosis in children.

Liver Transplantation in Children.

Liver transplantation (LT) for children has excellent short- and long-term patient and graft survival. LT is a lifesaving procedure in children with acute or chronic liver disease, hepatic tumors, and a few genetic metabolic diseases in which it can significantly improve quality of life. In this article, the authors discuss the unique aspects of pediatric LT, including the indications, patient selection and evaluation, allocation, transplant surgery and organ selection, posttransplant care, prognosis, adherence, and transition of care.

Effects of 25-hydroxycholesterol on cholesterol esterification and sterol regulatory element-binding protein processing are dissociable: implications for cholesterol movement to the regulatory pool in the endoplasmic reticulum.

The regulatory pool of cholesterol is located in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and is key to how mammalian cells sense and respond to changes in cellular cholesterol levels. The extent of cholesterol esterification by the ER-resident protein, acyl-coenzyme A:cholesterol acyl-transferase (ACAT), has become the standard method for monitoring cholesterol transport to the ER and is assumed to reflect the regulatory pool of ER cholesterol. The oxysterol, 25-hydroxycholesterol (25HC), is thought to trigger intracellular cholesterol transport to the ER. In support of this contention, we confirmed previous reports that 25HC activates cholesterol esterification and is a potent suppressor of the sterol regulatory element-binding protein (SREBP) pathway. Processing of the ER membrane-bound SREBP into a soluble transcription factor is controlled by cholesterol levels in the ER. In this study, we addressed whether or not cholesterol esterification necessarily reflects cholesterol movement to the cholesterol homeostatic machinery in the ER as determined by SREBP processing. We found that three agents that inhibited the ability of 25HC to induce cholesterol esterification (progesterone, nigericin, and monensin) did not have a corresponding effect on 25HC suppression of SREBP processing. Moreover, ACAT inhibition did not alter the sensitivity of SREBP processing to 25HC. Therefore, cholesterol esterification by the ER-resident protein ACAT is dissociable from cholesterol transport to the cholesterol homeostatic machinery in the ER. In light of our results, we question the security of previous work that has inferred cholesterol transport to the ER regulatory pool based solely on cholesterol esterification.