Limelight: Coming down with 'fat' By Lubna Abdel-Aziz If you believe that obesity is man's most common chronic disease -- you are right! If you believe it has overtaken tobacco as a major cause of health risk problems, you are right again! But if you believe that obesity is caused by excess food consumption and reduced physical activity, you may be only partially right. According to a new 10 year study conducted by the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, FAT is a viral infection. So, if you are overweight or obese, a common cold type virus may be interfering with your normal body processes rendering you heavier than normal. Does that mean that you can actually catch 'obesity' as you would a common cold? Yes, you can! It is a communicable disease, and we would be wise to watch out and avoid the company of fat people, at least during the infective period, which lasts about 2-3 months. Utter rubbish, you say. Not so! Even the scientific community has some believers, although the sceptics are numerous. Dr. Nihil Dhurandhar, of Wayne State University, Detroit Michigan, has been conducting a study on a virus called Adenovirus-36. His research team has documented over 1000 obese patients whose condition was linked to the virus. They discovered that 20% of the patients had been infected with Adenovirus-36. Another separate study showed that if you were already obese, you are three times more likely to catch the virus, than your slender, much envied, next door neighbour. So desperate are we to find a solution for this globally threatening epidemic, we are ready to accept any theory, and try any remedy, even as far-fetched as this one. But even among the most skeptic in the traditional scientific community, this theory has found some credibility, and endless grants are pouring in for Dhurandhar and further research on the subject. Global obesity has increased from one billion in 2003 to 1,7 billion in 2008 according to the World Health Organization, In the USA 61% of the populations is now officially classified as obese or overweight. The epidemic is spreading like wildfire from continent to continent at an alarming pace, sharply increasing the rate of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and several forms of cancer. Junk food? Inactivity? Internet? Malnutrition? Excess fat, excess sugar, excess salt? Yes, yes -- yes -- but maybe there is more! The story of the cold virus of Dr. Dhurandhar started in Bombay in 1980. A mysterious serious epidemic destroyed hundreds of thousands of chickens, due to an infection of an adenovirus called SMAM-1. Adenoviruses, which collectively number over 50, are quite common, as common as the common cold. Chances are that we have all been infected with one or more. What alerted Dhurandhar was that the contaminated chickens were plump and large rather than emaciated and weak, as one would expect following a virus infection. He decided to infect more chickens with the same virus, and sure enough the birds got fatter. He moved to the US, and conducted further studies on chicken, rhesus monkeys, and marmosets reaching the same results! But how to experiment on humans? No one in his right mind would accept to be injected by a virus and certainly not a fat virus. Instead Dr. Dhurandhar studied 1000 patients in 3 US cities, 500 obese and 500 slender. 30% of the obese tested positive with AD-36 virus compared to only 5-10% of their counterparts. AD36 stimulates the pre- fat cells to turn into fat cells, which continue to multiply. Dr. Dhurandhar furthered his research on a set of identical twins with identical genes, who looked and weighed the same, until they went to college. One of them, at some point, became infected with the AD virus and gained weight excessively, while the other remained AD-36 negative and slim. While the scientific community at large remains skeptical, we must not forget that it was "only a few years ago when the idea that a bacterium could give one ulcers or heart disease" was ludicrous. Teaming up with obesity specialist Richard Atkinson of the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Dhurandhar accumulated more significant data to sway enough scientific hard-heads. In fact, quite a few are willing to accept that viruses could be involved in obesity. Says Dr. John Foreyt of Texas, Baylor School of Medicine: "Viruses can lie dormant for many years, and we have seen the crossover of the HIV virus, for example, from animals to humans." Could we be seeing a similar thing now with the obesity virus? Is it possible that, like HIV, someone working on a chicken, half a century ago, came in contact with a bird with SMAM-1 and (AD-36) and the two viruses got together, exchanged greetings and genetic materials, and the result was a hybrid virus that makes us fat? Is that why so many of us are fat? That is a frightening thought. Dr. Dhurandhar has a comforting solution. Should his work with Atkinson eventually becomes scientifically proven -- the answer is a virus vaccine, which prevents the disease altogether, or antiviral drugs which could reverse the disease. Work on an antiviral drug against AD-36 is in fact already underway. There are a myriad unanswered queries. Can we just catch obesity from someone on a bus or on the street? Should we keep away from the obese, just as we keep away from people with a cold? "The virus is highly infectious for sure," says Dr. Dhurandhar, but Atkinson is quick to reassure us, that the virus in fat people is long past the infectious stage: "A fat person whose gotten fat because of the fat virus isn't going to hurt you. It's the skinny guy with a cold who's sneezing on you. Watch that guy. Discriminate against him." Fat is caused by many reasons, but if the virus theory proves to be true, it will be responsible for 30-40% of the fat population. Several grants are being showered on Dhurandhar and Atkinson, allowing them to pursue their research, and develop that magical vaccine. Meanwhile for most of us, it is back to the same old grind. Eat right, eat less, and hit that confounded gym! Who shall decide when doctors disagree? Alexander Pope (1680-1744)
