Fructose-induced Hepatic De Novo Lipogenesis in Adolescents With Obesity

In the U.S., dietary fructose has increased in parallel with the increase in obesity and may promote the development of diabetes and other chronic diseases. The largest source of dietary fructose is sweetened beverages that are consumed by adolescents more than any other age group. This protocol will compare the rates of hepatic de novo lipogenesis (DNL), a process in the liver that changes sugar into fat, in two groups of obese adolescents - one with prediabetes and the other, metabolically healthy. Blood will be sampled before and hourly for 3 hours after the consumption of a fructose-containing beverage. We hypothesize that the pre-diabetic group will show greater DNL in response to fructose. This would support other evidence that increased fructose-induced hepatic DNL is an early mechanism linking dietary sugar to the adverse metabolic sequelae of obesity, including diabetes, fatty liver, dyslipidemia and coronary disease.