Is fat contagious? A Virginia scientist thinks it might be and wants to test our blood for a fat virus.
Virginia physician and scientist Richard Atkinson, who is president of the American Obesity Association, has set up a new lab in Richmond called Obetech designed to test human blood for a fat virus, reports The Washington Post.
Before you laugh, know this: There is such a virus in chickens. And weirdly, the chickens that are infected are much fatter but have lower blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels than chickens that are not infected. Atkinson and Nikhal Dhurandhar have identified a similar "fat virus" that they say is "quite common in humans." It's called adenovirus (AD) 36. Atkinson's lab test costs between $125 to $150 and results take a few weeks.
Even if our weight gain is caused by a fat virus, eating less and moving more are still the best way to fight obesity. But understanding why we get fat, why some people can carry the extra weight with minimal health impact, and how to predict which slender twentysomethings will have a beer belly by age 45 are questions that intrigue scientists.
Atkinson and Dhurandhar injected the AD 36 fat virus into healthy animals and noticed it caused them to become fat compared with control groups that did not receive the injection. Washington Post reporter Sally Squires writes that just like Dhurandhar's chickens, the infected animals had blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels that remained lower than those in uninfected animals.
Since they can't inject a virus into human beings, the team screened blood from obese Americans and people of a healthy weight. They specifically looked for a previous AD 36 infection by hunting for antibodies against the fat virus. They found that about 30 percent of the obese participants had antibodies against AD 36, compared with 10 percent of the healthy-weight control subjects. Once again, those who had AD 36 also had significantly lower blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels than their uninfected counterparts.
The idea that a virus might be partly responsible for weight gain "is sort of a fringe idea as opposed to a cutting-edge idea," Steven B. Heymsfield, deputy director of the St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Obesity Research Center in New York, cautioned The Washington Post. "But Doctors Atkinson and Dhurandhar have done their homework. There's nothing to suggest that their observations are not valid to this point."
Atkinson is quick to point out that having the fat virus does not mean you will definitely become obese, but if you find out you have been infected before you have gained a lot of weight, it will alert you to be cautious.
Virginia physician and scientist Richard Atkinson, who is president of the American Obesity Association, has set up a new lab in Richmond called Obetech designed to test human blood for a fat virus, reports The Washington Post.
Before you laugh, know this: There is such a virus in chickens. And weirdly, the chickens that are infected are much fatter but have lower blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels than chickens that are not infected. Atkinson and Nikhal Dhurandhar have identified a similar "fat virus" that they say is "quite common in humans." It's called adenovirus (AD) 36. Atkinson's lab test costs between $125 to $150 and results take a few weeks.
Even if our weight gain is caused by a fat virus, eating less and moving more are still the best way to fight obesity. But understanding why we get fat, why some people can carry the extra weight with minimal health impact, and how to predict which slender twentysomethings will have a beer belly by age 45 are questions that intrigue scientists.
Atkinson and Dhurandhar injected the AD 36 fat virus into healthy animals and noticed it caused them to become fat compared with control groups that did not receive the injection. Washington Post reporter Sally Squires writes that just like Dhurandhar's chickens, the infected animals had blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels that remained lower than those in uninfected animals.
Since they can't inject a virus into human beings, the team screened blood from obese Americans and people of a healthy weight. They specifically looked for a previous AD 36 infection by hunting for antibodies against the fat virus. They found that about 30 percent of the obese participants had antibodies against AD 36, compared with 10 percent of the healthy-weight control subjects. Once again, those who had AD 36 also had significantly lower blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels than their uninfected counterparts.
The idea that a virus might be partly responsible for weight gain "is sort of a fringe idea as opposed to a cutting-edge idea," Steven B. Heymsfield, deputy director of the St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Obesity Research Center in New York, cautioned The Washington Post. "But Doctors Atkinson and Dhurandhar have done their homework. There's nothing to suggest that their observations are not valid to this point."
Atkinson is quick to point out that having the fat virus does not mean you will definitely become obese, but if you find out you have been infected before you have gained a lot of weight, it will alert you to be cautious.
