How common is Fatty Liver Disease?

[Riyo]

This is me being curious more than anything. There was a thread on Geckos Unlimited and someone was asking whether their leo was egg bound or fat, and someone told her that her gecko had fatty liver disease and it was very common. While I do not think this is necessarily true in this person's case, especially without a vet's diagnosis (and I did not see an enlarged liver in the pictures, but I am no expert) it got me thinking. Is fatty liver disease common in healthy leos? Are they more likely to get it just because they have fat deposits in their abdomen? I wanted to speak up but I don't feel educated enough on the topic.

I did do a search and not much came up so I was just looking for some expert opinions.

Thanks all

 

[BGalloway]

This is my opinion based on animal nutrition class.
Fatty liver happens when the body mobilizes fat stores and the liver gets overloaded with fat from the bodies fat stores and tries to process it. The animal's metabolism get wrecked and it dies. That is the oversimplified version of things.
A healthy animal is 1. not overweight and 2. should be eating regularly. So if the animal is healthy there is no problem because the body doesn't say "we're starved for energy, dump and burn all the fat we have now!"

 

[Gregg M]

You will mostly see this in animals that are over fed... You will also see this often in reptiles that are fed rodents in captivity that normally do not eat rodents in the wild...
Snakes like Hognoses are prone to fatty liver in captivity because they are forced to take rodents as prey when they normaly never feed on them in the wild... Same goes for many gecko species including Leos...