A virus making you fat???

kitticus15

I came across this written by Emily Yoffe is a columnist for Slate.com and the author of What the Dog Did (Bloomsbury).

Just thought I would put it out here and see what you all think, not sure what to think myself to be honest, found it on the Oprah website while doing my usual bounce around the internet with morning coffee.

codswallup or truth tell me what you think...

It may sound far-fetched, but the theory that a virus can make you fat is gaining credibility. In 1986 Nikhil Dhurandhar was treating obese patients in Bombay, India, while working on a PhD in biochemistry, when he had a conversation with a fellow scientist about an avian virus that was killing poultry. The scientist mentioned an odd effect the virus had on the infected chickens: Their abdominal cavities were full of fat, and the dead birds were far heavier than their healthy counterparts. A sick chicken should be a skinny chicken, Dhurandhar thought. He wondered what would happen if he exposed normal chickens to the virus. Sure enough, the ones that got infected developed significantly more body fat than the healthy birds and, paradoxically, lower cholesterol and triglycerides.

The findings were so compelling that he decided to test his patients for antibodies to the virus—and he discovered nearly 20 percent of them had been infected. Not only that, these were among the heaviest people in his practice, and they had lower cholesterol and triglycerides than most of his other patients.

Today Dhurandhar is a scientist at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana, studying a field he has named infectobesity. He and others have found nine viruses that cause obesity in animals, four of which also infect humans. He may have discovered part of the mechanism as well: After animals are infected with one particular human virus, their prefat cells mature and proliferate, increasing the number of fat cells in the body.

Dhurandhar says we are a long way from being able to tell some overweight people that their problem is a virus, or better yet, offering an obesity vaccine. But he points out that there is exploding research in the area of germs causing other chronic illnesses such as heart disease, autoimmune diseases, even depression. And he cites the experience of the two Australian researchers who suggested that a bacterium was responsible for stomach ulcers and were scoffed at for years—until they won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2005. Famously, one of those researchers swallowed a Petri dish of the bacteria to prove his case. Is the slender Dhurandhar willing to infect himself with one of his viruses to prove his thesis? He laughs and says if he did it and gained weight, "people would just say I ate too much."

SnuggleSmacks

I would love to see this further explored, as we are finding more and more diseases and conditions caused by viruses, like HPV and cervical cancer...but I would hate to see something like this used as a crutch or excuse. "Of course I'm fat and can't lose weight. I caught a virus! It's not my fault! Could you please pass the ice cream?"

prattiger65

Obviously I don't know, but my first thought is, no. In order to gain weight there has to be an energy surplus. I just don't see how a virus can create calories. Is the supposition that the virus causes one to over eat? Or that the virus slows metabolic processes? It would take quite a bit to make me a believer.

honsi

Yes I've heard of this 'the chicken virus', the BBC covered it a program about weight ( possibly Horizon) presented by Micheal Mosley a couple of years ago. It talked about how people would get ill for a week with a bug and then put on a lot of weight and it was the chicken virus that had made them ill, also that it was contagious.

agrafina

I would love to see this further explored, as we are finding more and more diseases and conditions caused by viruses, like HPV and cervical cancer...but I would hate to see something like this used as a crutch or excuse. "Of course I'm fat and can't lose weight. I caught a virus! It's not my fault! Could you please pass the ice cream?"

Meh, what is one more excuse?

I think it should be further explored as well. I think just like everything else, the more you know, the better opportunity you give to people who are willing to change their behaviors even in the presence of factors that make it harder to lose, but not impossible (like insulin resistance or hypothyroidism). People who will use it as an excuse will use anything as an excuse, if not "I caught a virus! Its not my fault!" then "I can't start my diet! Its not Monday yet!" and then conveniently forget to start when Monday rolls around.

agrafina

Obviously I don't know, but my first thought is, no. In order to gain weight there has to be an energy surplus. I just don't see how a virus can create calories. Is the supposition that the virus causes one to over eat? Or that the virus slows metabolic processes? It would take quite a bit to make me a believer.

Is the problem maybe that with the proliferation of pre-fat cells, the body is more likely to store the excess as fat than it is to crank up metabolism and burn it? I know some studies have shown that people's metabolism can adjust to temporary increases in food by increasing how much is burned. I'll have to poke around pubmed, see if I can find them.

in_the_stars

Adenovirus 36?

agrafina

Obviously I don't know, but my first thought is, no. In order to gain weight there has to be an energy surplus. I just don't see how a virus can create calories. Is the supposition that the virus causes one to over eat? Or that the virus slows metabolic processes? It would take quite a bit to make me a believer.

Is the problem maybe that with the proliferation of pre-fat cells, the body is more likely to store the excess as fat than it is to crank up metabolism and burn it? I know some studies have shown that people's metabolism can adjust to temporary increases in food by increasing how much is burned. I'll have to poke around pubmed, see if I can find them.

Hmmm, I can't find anything that would support that the number of fat cells plays any role in causing obesity. I think this is a media science fail.

agrafina

Adenovirus 36?

Do they know the mechanism? i see promise in a potential vaccine, (at least, I would see more than abstracts if I were at work), but do we know what the mechanism is that makes it cause increased fat accumulation?

in_the_stars

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Adenovirus+36+obesity&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=3GyAU8HpBs-aqAa_hIKIDw&ved=0CCYQgQMwAA

Just a basic intro - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenovirus_serotype_36#Role_in_obesity
Or - http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/766526

Alatariel75

I'd never say that this is impossible, or even unlikely, but I know I'm fat because I ate and ate and ate, far beyond what I needed or even wanted.

As far as I'm concerned, if there IS a virus, it will affect a tiny part of the population while a much greater percentage seek to use it as another excuse.

kitticus15

maybe people get a virus that sets off fat storage, and no matter what they do they are unable to turn that switch off. Maybe there are people out there that have such a virus but are unaware and are being condemned for being fat and are beating themselves up for fatness, not everyone is looking for a quick fix or something to blame, some people are looking to understand why nothing works for them and being accused of being lazy or "special snowflake" is not really helpful.

Yes some people are excuse hunters and some people are really looking for reasons and help but not everbody is the same and as I have read a lot on these forums weightloss is not linear.

Discussion and understanding is what is needed, we know a lot more about human bodies now than we did 100 years ago, who knows what we will discover in the future.

Branstin

I'd never say that this is impossible, or even unlikely, but I know I'm fat because I ate and ate and ate, far beyond what I needed or even wanted.

As far as I'm concerned, if there IS a virus, it will affect a tiny part of the population while a much greater percentage seek to use it as another excuse.

+1

The virus I caught was called calories surplus.