Obesity may be contagious !

When I read this title, I was amazed and went into the details, which are really interesting. According to Professor Nikhil Dhurandhar (Pennington Biomedical Research Centre in Louisiana), a common cold virus can interfere with our normal body processes and make us fat - he has reached this rather astonishing conclusion following ten years of research with both animals and humans into the virus, Adenovirus-36. His findings are of great improtance becoz of the fact that the airborne "adenovirus" germ may be contributing to the obesity epidemic - the highly infectious cold-like virus is known to cause coughs, sore throats, diarrhoea and conjunctivitis. These results are substantiated by the fact that 1000 patients, whose obesity appears to be linked to infection with the virus.

Blood samples taken from patients attending an obesity clinic were tested for antibodies to Adenovirus-36 and it was found that 20% of the patients had encountered the virus at some point and were significantly heavier than their antibody negative counterparts.

Other research 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 explain his conclusion in the following lines : virus goes to the lungs and spreads to various organs such as the liver, kidney, brain and fat tissue and the Adenovirus-36 virus reaches the fat tissue it replicates making more copies of itself and in the process increases the number of fat cells and this may explain why people gain weight when infected with the virus. The virus lingers for up to three months, during which time it multiplies fat and is contagious to others and is possibly encountered in early chilhood. Though many Obesity experts, say the virus is not the reason why there is a major epidemic of obesity but may be instead a small contributing factor and all avenues must be explored but the basic message remains that people need to eat less and exercise more. Any way something interesting and if it happens to be proven one more SERENDIPITY to the existing truths.....