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Obesity is a major problem in Britain OBESITY can be “caught” as easily as a common cold from other people’s coughs, sneezes and dirty hands, scientists will claim today. Researchers believe that an airborne “adenovirus” germ could be causing the fat plague that is blighting Britain and other countries. As many as one in three obese people may have become overweight after falling victim to the highly infectious cold-like virus, known as AD-36. It is known to cause coughs, sore throats, diarrhoea and conjunctivitis but has now also been found to make fat cells multiply, leading to weight gain....

There was a lot of hoopla surrounding the controversial suggestion that obesity is "socially contagious" made by Harvard and University of California, San Diego researchers earlier this year. According to this earlier study, if someone’s friend becomes obese, for example, that individual’s chances of becoming obese went up by 57% percent. Among mutual friends, the effect increased up to 171%. The study was the first of it’s kind, and appeared to show a strong correlation between our friend’s waistlines and what we personally find to be a socially acceptable size. But what if fat wasn’t just “socially” contagious in the...

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...

Obesity 'can be caught like a cold' By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 31/01/2006) Evidence that obesity could be contagious was published yesterday by American researchers - and washing your hands could be an elementary step to avoiding the virus and becoming overweight. A team led by Dr Leah Whigham, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, found that the human adenovirus Ad-37 causes obesity in chickens, marking the third virus to be linked to being overweight: two related viruses, Ad-36 and Ad-5, also cause obesity in animals. Moreover, Ad-36 has been associated with human obesity, leading researchers to suspect that...