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A team of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, led by Dr Leah Whigham, discovered that the human adenovirus Ad-37 leads to obesity in chickens, marking the third virus to be linked to being overweight: two related viruses, Ad-36 and Ad-5, also lead to obesity in animals. What’s more, Ad-36 has been connected with human obesity, which leads scientists to suspect that Ad-37 also may be connected.
“We know Ad-36, and now Ad-37, cause obesity in animals,” said Dr Whigham, whose findings are published in the American Journal of Physiology. “But we do not have cause-and-effect data in humans - you cannot ethically do the experiments for that kind of data: infect humans and see if they get fat.”
The idea that viruses can lead to obesity has been a controversial one among researchers, she admitted. And still, there is evidence that other factors may be at work.
“With the exception of infectious diseases, no other chronic disease in history has spread so rapidly,” Dr Whigham said. “The nearly simultaneous increase in obesity in most countries is difficult to explain by changes in food intake and exercise alone, and suggest that adenoviruses could have contributed.”
By: Paul Douglas
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