Posted on 08/20/2007 1:44:54 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A common virus caused human adult stem cells to turn into fat cells and could explain why some people become obese, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
The research builds on prior studies of adenovirus-36 -- a common cause of respiratory and eye infections -- and it may lead to an obesity vaccine, they said.
"We're not talking about preventing all types of obesity, but if it is caused by this virus in humans, we want a vaccine to prevent this," said Nikhil Dhurandhar, an associate professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University System.
The virus adenovirus-36 or Ad-36, caused animals to pack on the pounds in lab experiments. "These animals accumulated a lot of fat," Dhurandhar said in a telephone interview.
Dhurandhar also has shown that obese people were three times more likely to have been infected with Ad-36 than thin people in a large study of humans.
Now, researchers in Dhurandhar's lab have shown that exposure to the virus caused adult human stem cells to turn into fat-storing cells.
Dr. Magdalena Pasarica, who led the study, obtained adult stem cells from fat tissue of people who had undergone liposuction. Stem cells are a type of master cell that exist in an immature form and give rise to more specialized cells.
Half of the stem cells were exposed to the virus Ad-36. After a week, most of the infected stem cells developed into fat cells, while the uninfected cells were unchanged.
Pasarica presented her findings at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.
"The virus appears to change their commitment to a fat storing cell," Dhurandhar said, adding that Ad-36 is just one of 10 pathogens linked to obesity and that more may be out there.
He acknowledged that some people might find it hard to believe that a virus could be responsible for obesity.
"Certainly overeating has something to do with gaining weight. No doubt about that. But that is not the whole truth," Dhurandhar said. "There are multiple causes of obesity. They range from simple overeating to genes to metabolism and perhaps viruses and infections."
Long term, he said he hoped to develop a vaccine and perhaps treatments for the virus. But first, he and colleagues need to better understand the role of Ad-36 in human obesity, he said.
Globally, around 400 million people are obese, including 20 million children under age 5, according to the World Health Organization.
Exactly.
Bravo! I am going to steal your answer and use it myself. It expresses so clearly what I’ve been thinking about the glib responses to anything that talks about the causes of obesity being anything but “too much food and not enough movement”.
Good point.
Why are skinny people able to eat whatever they want? And not gain weight?
Why are there no drugs to affect your metabolism?
Is she taking artificial or natural thyroid?? There are some people for whom the synthetic simply doesn't work. Switching to animal-derived (I think Armour) helps in some cases. Also, she may be lacking nutritional thyroid co-factors needed to get full benefit of the hormone.
Now THAT is child abuse. No parent should ever let their children get obese like that. If it’s glandular they should be seen by a physician LONG before it ever reaches that point.
Has she tried doing her 30 minutes of cardio on an elliptical using an HIIT routine? Studies show that using an HIIT routine is more effective at burning fat and the body continues to burn fat for hours afterward.
Being dismissive around here is commonplace.
It is too bad that alot of people pile on fat people as being solely those who overeat. I’ve been cutting back, and don’t seem to be losing alot. I’m taking responsiblity for my eating, but they aren’t open minded enough to understand that not everyone is an overeater. Nor do they understand how hurtful it is to be constantly criticized and scrutinized over everything we eat.
Atkins is the only diet that has worked for me.
Not open to the possiblity that not everyone who is fat is overeating?
Why is it junk science? You base your assertion on what?
naaaaaaahhhhh.... never.
(/s)
ping
Here you go again with using your niece’s bad crash diet as “evidence” against the best most successful healthiest way their is to lose weight.
no a person is NOT guaranteed to go back to eating the way they did before (which if they weight 400 pounds is NOT normal eating).
A full grown adult should NEVER under ANY circumstances be eating less than 1000 calories a day. That’s a crash diet that puts a person into starvation mode which is unhealthy. Like I told you before it’s eat LESS exercise more not eat almost nothing.
The problem isn’t that diets fail it’s that PEOPLE fail. It happens all the time. Plateaus aren’t a failure, if you stick to a healthy exercise program the plateaus will end on their own after a few weeks and you will resume losing weight. In the mean time during a plateau you tend to lose girth, during my weight loss I could almost guarantee that when the scale wouldn’t budge for two weeks is when I’d have to remove a link from my watch band.
Unless a person is fighting their own genetics (and that’s a really small percentage of the people) eat less move more ALWAYS when PROPERLY applied. That means no crash dieting, that means no starvation mode, that means approaching it as a permanent change of your life so no going back to eating like “normal”. And it works GREAT for losing lots of weight. If eat less exercise more is so bad for losing lots of weight why is it that’s the EXACT method they use for morbidly obese people, sure they use surgeries to either force the person to eat less or force the person to digest less, but that’s still what they do.
you really need to stop using you and your nieces failures with crash diets as “evidence” against a good healthy way for people to lose weight. For one thing neither of you actually followed eat less exercise more, and for another the plural of anecdote is not fact.
AMEN!
That is my point. It’s easy to sit back and say that those who are overweight ate a box of donuts this morning.
Here is my example.
I have two daughters. One is skinny, one is getting chunky.
The chunky one is the child constantly in motion. She loves veggies. We don’t do sugar in our house because I am fighting weight. No pop, no juice, low-fat milk (8 oz per meal only) She is an ice water drinker. Her idea of dessert is a peach or apple.
The skinny one is a bookworm. She eats anything she wants and only moves when her sister pulls her out. Her idea of a snack would be cake (if we had it) She and Daddy have a secret stash of candy that they eat when the little one is in bed.
So why is the little one chunky? She eats less and moves more.
It’s not quite that easy, is it?
Or, worse yet, look around and look at all the fat asses you know, and which have an eating habit/exercise habit that's probably got NOTHING to do with their obesity...it's a virus that will win this guy a Nobel prize.
I guess injection of common sense based on personal experience and observation is frowned upon now.
DU notoriously lacks common sense to situations, but here, we're adopting similar commentors who think common sense doesn't belong here as it's "un-scientific".
thanks, bfl
Thank you. We're sooooo into personal responsibility here, that we knee-jerk to anything that flies in the face of that. It reminds me of the belief during the Middle Ages that sickness was some sort of divine retribution on a person.
Then we learned about germs.
That common virus is called “the fat mouth” virus.
The only known cure is not to overeat
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