Common cold virus may make kids fat

[Warpy]

A common virus may be one of the causes of the troubling obesity epidemic in American children, a new study shows.

University of California, San Diego researchers found that obese children were far more likely to have antibodies to a specific strain of adenovirus than normal weight children, according to the report published early online in Pediatrics. Children who showed signs of infection with adenovirus 36 (AD36), a common cause of some colds and eye infections, were an average of 50 pounds heavier than those who had no antibodies to the virus.

“This shows that body weight regulation and the development of obesity are very complicated issues,” said the study’s senior author, Dr. Jeffrey Schwimmer, an associate professor of pediatrics at UC San Diego and director of Weight and Wellness at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. “It’s not simply a case that some children eat too much and others don’t. There are children who eat all the wrong things in all the wrong quantities who are not obese.”
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Still, earlier research with cells in petri dishes suggests that the virus may cause changes in the body that lead to weight gain. Some studies have shown that the virus can enter fat cell precursors, rewiring them to spew out more fat cells, while others have shown that the virus can modify fat cells themselves so that they store more fat.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39235187/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/

Get that, moralists?

[HuckleB]

1. Recommended.

[Orrex]

2. Whoa. Very interesting.

I know that you've been making the case for obesity-as-epidemic for quite a while.

This is a remarkable discovery!

[Warpy]

7. They've known about it in vitro for a very long time

This is the first time they've come up with numbers showing it in vivo.

It's just a piece of the puzzle. Some people are undoubtedly fat because of poor food choices. Others are fat because of something else, and the whole picture for all of them is a lot more complicated than moralist simpletons would like to believe.

We have to know what the whole picture is before we can even think of treating the problem. As yet, there is no permanent cure for obesity.

[damntexdem]

3. Then that strain isn't the Common Cold Virus. It's ...

the Childhood Obesity Virus.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

4. I'm putting my money on quarter-pounders.

/reckless speculation

[unblock]

10. these days it ain't the quarter-pounders, it's the wendy's triples!

but seriously, folks, there's more to it than simply eating too much.
many thin people could not physically eat too much if they tried.
many thin people can, as the article says, eat too much and all the wrong foods yet still not become obese.
and many obese people eat VERY little and still can't lose weight.

[Abq_Sarah]

5. Interesting assumption

But is the virus present because of obesity and the stress it puts on their bodies or does it cause obesity?

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. Don't you feel better now?

Life if good when you can look down on a vast number of lesser people, isn't it?

[unblock]

11. i have lousy eating habits and never exercise, yet i've never been obese a day in my life.

and i've known plenty of obese people who eat really heathfully and exercise daily and can't get their weight down.

there's much more going on when it comes to weight regulation than even exercise or diet can explain.

personal responsibility? i'm incredibly LUCKY that i don't have an appetite that's out of control. by all rights i should be morbidly obese, but i've got a nearly perfect bmi. something about my metabolism adjusts to whatever i eat. overweight people generally hate me for this, but i make up for it through complete empathy for their situation.

blaming other for not overcoming their appetite displays a clear ignorance of what their appetite is telling them. obese people get a signal in their brain that tells them they are going to starve to death if they don't eat more. they experience hunger pain in a way that i will never be able to fully appreciate. so i wouldn't dream of telling them to overcome something that, for me, is a trivially easy task, because I DON'T EXPERIENCE THEIR BODILY SIGNALS. if my body were to change and tell me to eat or die, i'm pretty sure i would not be able to overcome that, and i would gain weight like crazy.

so please, PLEASE! stop spewing hatred and try to appreciate what others are going through.

[d_r]

9. correlation ne causation

maybe obese kids have weaker immune systems, and so are more likely to get the cold? Or maybe there is some other extraneous variable?

[swilton]

12. + 1

Separating the causal mechanisms from the results is always tricky.

Although I didn't read the article, I just wonder who sponsored this research?

The sceptic that I am would not be surprised to find studies such as this put out by the food processing industry as part of a disinformation campaign to draw attention away from the food processing industry that thrives on manufacturing food and continues to attack the whole foods back to natural living/community supported agriculture/local foods movement(s).

[HuckleB]

13. Kick.

[Warpy]

14. Thanks!

This is the kind of thing that needs to get out there. Too many people, especially kids, are blaming themselves and internalizing all the prejudice.

There are going to be a lot of red faces if it's proven that it has been an infectious epidemic all along.