Posted on 08/20/2007 4:58:16 PM PDT by Lovebloggers
WASHINGTON --In the buffet of reasons for why Americans are getting fatter, researchers are piling more evidence on the plate for one still-controversial cause: a virus.
New research announced Monday at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in Boston found that when human stem cells -- the blank slate of the cell world -- were exposed to a common virus they turned into fat cells. They didn't just change, they stored fat, too.
While this may be a guilt-free explanation for putting on pounds, it doesn't explain all or even most of America's growing obesity problem. But it adds to other recent evidence that blames expanding waistlines on more than just super-sized appetites and underused muscles.
For several years, researchers have looked at a possible link between obesity and this common virus, called adenovirus-36, from a family of viruses that cause colds and pinkeye in people. They had already found that a higher percentage of fat people had been infected with the virus than nonfat people. They had exposed animals to the virus and got them to fatten up and even found a a gene in the virus that causes animals to get obese.
But ethical restraints kept researchers from exposing people to the virus to see what happens. So they did what would be considered the next best thing, said Nikhil Dhurandhar, who headed the research at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in the Louisiana State University system.
They took fat tissue from people who had liposuction, removed adult stem cells from the tissue and exposed the cells to the virus in the lab. Adult stem cells can regenerate and turn into different types of specialized cells to help the body heal itself.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
In before the self righteous come here to say this is all bunk and the only possible reason people are fat is because they are lazy. Or some variation thereof.
I’ve seen that virus. It was stacked 4 inches high on a plate as big as a platter. Fat people EAT...and they eat a lot....or drink a lot.
Uh-oh.
You're gonna join the rest of us who implied pushouts (ie., push out from the table and quit stuffin' your face) was a cause of most fat asses, and we were all branded:
"Nattering Nabobs of Negatism" by the fatso's on the forum (or friends of fatso's).
You've been warned.
Been overweight most of my adult life.
Had to have all my upper teeth pulled a year ago. Have dropped over 50 lbs. since then. Guess my new “plastic” teeth have nullified the virus! ;-)
I have Found that food doesn’t taste as good with the new teeth. I know, I know … the taste buds are in the tongue, but I have discovered that texture is a strong part of the enjoyable sensation of eating and that job seems to belong to the roof of the mouth. With a full upper, food texture is missing and therefore the desire to eat tends to drop to the level of subsistence only. Hard way to lose weight, but mayhap a chink in the virus theory.
If my overweight problem was the result of a virus, did the virus go away with the introduction of the false teeth?
Virus, maybe … self control, better.
Just a curious observation and question.
Yes, the old virus, right elbow bends mouth pops open.
#1: You may have been overweight for any number of reasons.
#2 Even if this report is true, and a virus caused more fat cells to develop, they need to be fed to cause you to be fat.
I don’t think there is anyone who will disagree that starvation WILL make anyone lose weight.
No matter...it's a self discipline thing...The teeth are effectively giving you the discipline or effort you lacked in keeping a healthy weight.
Now, don't tell the Dems about my thoughts. They might start pulling teeth as part of some health program.
Over the last 5 years, I’ve lost 30 pounds. It seems exercise and reduced eating are slowly killing off the fat virus!
Not so much starvation as lack of over indulgence. When food is desired for its basic reason (subsistence) only, the weight drops off. That was my only point. And I’m a case in point. When the desire to overindulge was removed, I lost weight. Might be something to consider rather than blaming everything on a disease or genetics.
I know a lot of people who exhibit all the symptoms of gluttony and sloth.
Who is blaming everything on a disease or genetics?
No one can argue that if calories burned equals calories consumed there won’t be weight gain.
Over half the population is overweight. SOMEthing must be going on. But how the heck can well over half the population be obese when just 40 years ago (when I was a kid) it was rare?
Something changed, I just can not believe that human nature has changed that much in such a short time.
Change:
Yea, our national glut of “snack foods”, easy access to unhealthily fast food. Lack of physical exercise (thank you Mr. TV.). And an abundance of sugar laden foods. A change has occurred, and it is not a virus, disease yes, virus … no. Is this virus a latter day manifestation? In the days before the introduction of sugar-laden foods and sedation of TV, video game and etc., overweight problems were rare.
Human nature didn’t change, just the world around them.
It hardly takes eating “a LOT” of food over maintenance to become “fat” over several years. An man of average height (5’9) in a normal weight range at 160 pounds would be obese at 200 pounds. Try figuring up how easy it is to eat the additional daily calories required to gain 10 pounds in a year. (Hint: It doesn’t remotely involve stuffing your face.) Now figure you’re doing that over, say, five or six years.
The “overweight and obesity epidemic” is not simply driven by a bunch of slothful gluttons running around. Many, many people who are overweight (and eventually obese, though less so those who become morbidly obese) get that way in the same way as the old tale of the frog that stays in the water as the heat is slowly turned up. It’s a slow accumulation of weight resulting from easy calorie intake increases that snowball over time.
Agree … ain’t no virus in charge is my point.
"Not all infected people will develop obesity," she said. "We would like to identify the underlying factors that predispose some obese people to develop this virus and eventually to find a way to treat it." Previous research on animals suggested that adenovirus-36, and two related viruses known as Ad-37 and Ad-5, can trigger obesity. Another study found a high prevalence of adenovirus in overweight people; some 30 per cent of obese people had Ad-36 compared with 11 per cent of lean people. This led to suggestions that respiratory viruses may play an important role in triggering the tendency towards obesity in susceptible people with the sort of sedentary lifestyle that favours putting on weight. The latest study appears to support these claims at the cellular level by looking at how the virus interacts with human stem cells growing outside the body in laboratory cultures.
Dr Pasarica obtained the fatty tissue stem cells from a broad cross-section of patients who had undergone liposuction. She exposed only half of the stem cells to Ad-36. After a week of growth in the laboratory, most of the virus-infected adult stem cells developed into fat cells but the non-infected stem cells did not, Dr Pasarica told the American Chemical Society. "A common virus appears to target stem cells in humans to generate more and bigger fat cells. "The results are clear. Ad-36 prompts adult, fat-derived stem cells to convert to pre-fat cells, rather than other cell types," she said. "Furthermore, these fat cells accumulate lipids - fats - at an increased rate." "We conclude that human adenovirus Ad-36 increases the number of fat cells and increases their fat content in humans, which might contribute to the development of obesity," she told the meeting. The spread of obesity around the developed world is one of the fastest-growing epidemics. But the idea of it being even partly the result of viral infections is contentious; most experts put it down to a change in diet and lifestyle.
Gee, a virus for overweight, infidelity, homosexually, normalcy and any other proclivity that is exigent to your own personal beliefs.
They cured that virus at Auschwitz and Daushau during WWII. I tell my wife “on occasion” that a fat person never came out of a concentration camp. Can’t say I recommend doing this to often. But it does get the point across.
Clearly a virus has the capacity to play a role in some cases, and it’s a common virus. It seems bizarre to dismiss the evidence that there could, indeed, be a contributory viral aspect here. Acknowledging the science doesn’t absolve people of personal responsibility, it doesn’t change ‘calorie math,’ it doesn’t change the need for healthy eating habits in general. It simply means that there may be something going on buried within the myriad of other conflating issues in something that has grown by leaps and bounds in a relatively short period of time.
Nowhere in my posting did I ever give the impression that a “virus” could not be the cause. Just seems strange that this mysterious “virus” pops on the scene along with fast food, sedentary lifestyle and lack of general activity amongst our youth.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.