Could it really be possible to catch obesity?
One doctor in the US believes that a common cold virus can interfere with our normal body processes and make us fat.
For the past ten years, Dr Nikhil Dhurandhar from Louisiana has been carrying out animal and human studies on the virus, Adenovirus-36.
He believes it could be one of the mechanisms causing some people to put on weight more quickly.
His team at the Pennington Biomedical Research Centre have now documented more than 1,000 patients whose obesity appears to be linked to infection with the virus.
Dr Dhurandhar’s team took blood samples from people an obesity clinic.
They tested it for antibodies to Adenovirus-36 and found that 20% of the patients had encountered the virus at some point and were significantly heavier than their antibody negative counterparts.
In another study, they showed that obese people were nearly three times more likely to have the virus than a non obese person and even amongst the non obese group, those with the virus were heavier than average.
Dr Dhurandhar said we probably encounter it first when we are small children and only remain infective for two to three months and there are many other reasons why we get fat.
And Dr Carel Le Roux, an obesity expert at Imperial College, who has been carrying out experiments to see if he can make thin people fat, said: “It’s very important to know that it’s not the reason why we’re seeing a major epidemic of obesity.
The World Health Organisation says that globally there are more than a billion overweight adults and a third of them are obese.
Obesity rates that have risen three-fold or more since 1980 in some areas of North America, the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, Australasia and China.
But Dr Tam Fry, chair of the Child Growth Foundation, said: “I’m sceptical because this theory has been around for 10 years and no-one has come up with a comparable study to back this up.
I think it is more likely because fat people are lazy and eat too much. And, when I said so on my own blog I was met with a lot of bleeding heart excuses from someone telling me I should feel sorry for fat people and that it is all an illness:
http://caughtinthemiddleman.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/letter-from-america/
……and presumably KFC is the cure!
Hello David and thanx for the visit I appreciate your visit and participation………and to your point you may be right in so cases, but in my state it is more likely because of poverty and education more than some virus.
Hmm, I’m kinda’ leaning towards this research study as a pile of bullshit! I don’t know… Lobotero, like you, I see a lot of overweight and obese people in their circumstances due to poverty, education, malnutrition… I just don’t see ‘fat’ as potentially contagious. I kinda’ think this study’s full o’ crap!
True that….but now I wanna know how I can get on the list for some grant money I am sure I can come up with a good idea for a study or two,,,whatcha think?
Hmmm… I wouldn’t know the first thing about getting a grant–except, perhaps one can try the NEA or a research foundation(?)
Hir girl…welcome back…me either…but I will be checking into how one gets on the list for these dumbass studies