"It's essentially another aspect of the metabolic imbalance these children are experiencing when they're overweight and inactive and is a signal they're at very high risk for diabetes," Davis said.

She already found that exercise reduces inflammation, visceral fat (a type of fat situated between the organs), body mass index and insulin levels. Children who exercised showed improvement on virtually all of those measures after just 20 to 40 minutes of daily aerobic exercise for 12 weeks. She presented the findings at the American Heart Association's Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism Conference in March.

Davis is working with Dr. Sudipta Misra, MCG pediatric hepatologist, to use novel ultrasound technology instead of the traditional biopsies to gauge liver fibrosis.

"A gentle pulse will pass through the liver, and the echo will determine if the liver is stiff (indicating disease) or nice and soft," Davis said.

Davis hopes her research will encourage programs to keep children active and hold lifestyle-related diseases at bay.

Source: Medical College of Georgia