Posted on 09/21/2010 4:27:39 AM PDT by mattstat
Jeff Schwimmer and his University of California-San Diego colleagues seem to think so. In a press-release that is being cut-and-pasted across across the internet, Schwimmer tells of a study he conducted which appeared to show that kids who caught a cold from the adenovirus 36 (AD36) were fatter than kids who avoided that virus.
To understand this study, you must become savvy to the lingo pediatricians use. Foremost is their use of the word children. Say that word to most civilians and they conjure up images of pre-teens; but to a pediatrician it implies anybody under 19, and sometimes even under 22. There is nothing wrong with this, of course, but if you were unaware of the distinction while examining pediatric study results, you could easily fool yourself.
Schwimmer et alia “examined 124 children, ages 8 to 18, for the presence of antibodies specific to” AD36. They also measured these kids’ weight, height, ethnicity (two-thirds were Hispanic; one quarter white; a tenth black), sex (just over half were boys), and so forth. But why look for previous infections of the AD36 virus? According to the press release:
While an association between AD-36 and obesity in both animals and human adults has been previously described, the particulars remain poorly understood. For example, it is not known how often or under what circumstances AD-36 infects, why the virus affects people differently and whether weight gain is the result of an active infection or a lasting change in a person’s metabolism. In cell cultures, Schwimmer said, the virus infects pre-adipocytes or immature fat cells, prompting them to develop more quickly and proliferate in greater numbers than normal.
In other words, some suspect that, through an inexactly specified and largely unknown mechanism, the virus makes people pack it on...
(Excerpt) Read more at wmbriggs.com ...
=^)
CC
Short answer. Yes.
Michael Moore must be coughing his head off.
But only in the short term as you lie around gaining weight.
Mother's advice
also
let your eye be your guide and your money the last thing you part with.
and for dims:
if wishes were horses... beggars would ride.
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