Obesity may be contagious

A growing amount of evidence now suggests that obesity may very well be contagious.

A human pathogen called the adenovirus Ad-37 causes obesity in chickens, according to a new study led by Leah Whigham of the departments of Medicine and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Previous research found that two related adenoviruses, Ad-36 and Ad-5, cause obesity in animals. Adenoviruses typically cause respiratory infections.

Importantly, Ad-36 has associated with human obesity in previous studies, and Ad-37 might be, too, but more research is needed, Whigham said.

SOURCE: LiveScience


Well, this was...interesting, I never would have thought that obesity could be virally charged.
If this is true, than it's no wonder so many people are overweight/obese, of course I mean the ones who don't eat McDonalds or other fatty foods three times a day, which actually probably is'nt that large a number, oh well.


Comments, Opinions?

[edit on 1/31/2006 by iori_komei]

It may be a contributor... a very small, small contributor.

The biggest causes of obesity:

1. Poor diet

2. Poor excersize

3. Genetics (metabolism)

That's really it. This probably weighs in at #150 in causes of obesity.
As my sister told me (she's in med-school currently - and no, I do NOT trust her with a scalpel!):

"It's easy really. If you eat more than you use, you gain weight. If you use more than you eat, you lose weight."

And she's right. If you eat less every day, and excersize just a LITTLE bit, you'll be changing the input-output of the system. You can slow or reverse weight-gains. Which is where Metabolism comes in. A high metabolism means that your normal "at rest" usage of energy is higher than normal - and so you don't need to excersize much. A low metabolism means that your body doesn't work that hard when at rest, and so you really do need to excersize to lose weight.

See this thread too

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I made out with this really fat chick once, and I gained 85 pounds by the next day.