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Virus blamed for obesity epidemic
Virus blamed for obesity epidemic - Science - Specials - smh.com.au
By Deborah Smith Science Editor
March 18, 2006
AS MANY as one in five Australians may have contracted a virus linked to obesity. Blood tests on 2000 Australians, carried out in the US, showed about 20 per cent of them had been exposed to a virus called Ad-36, which some researchers say can cause weight gain.
The idea that fatness is catching is controversial. However, Richard Atkinson, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who did the testing, said a fat virus could help explain the
worldwide epidemic of obesity.
"I believe obesity is a complex disease of many causes, one of which is viral infection," he said. How Ad-36 caused fatness was not known exactly, but it had been detected in fat cells in people and animals. In the laboratory it stimulates cells that are pre-fat cells to become fat cells.
