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...