Study Links Obesity to Childhood Virus




By Ronnie Koenig Sep 20th 2010 1:43PM

Categories: Children's Health, News
Overweight ChildA new study, which will appear in the journal Pediatrics, shows that children who are exposed to a particular strain of virus are more likely to be obese.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine examined 124 children ages 8 to 18 and looked for the presence of adenovirus 36 (AD36), which is the only human virus currently linked to obesity. There are more the 50 strains of adenovirus known to infect humans and they cause a host of respiratory and gastrointestinal infections.

Dr. Jeffrey B. Schwimmer, associate professor of clinical pediatrics at UC San Diego, said that the AD36-positive children weighed almost 50 pounds or more on average than kids who were AD36-negative. More than half of the children -- 67 -- in the study were obese. The researchers detected neutralizing antibodies specific to AD36 in 19 of the children, 15 percent. Within the group of obese children, those with AD36 were an average of 35 pounds heavier than obese children who were AD36-negative.

In a statement, Schwimmer said that he hopes the results of the study will shift some of the burden that falls on obese children.

"Many people believe that obesity is one's own fault or the fault of one's parents or family," he said. "This work helps point out that body weight is more complicated than it's made out to be. And it is time that we move away from assigning blame in favor of developing a level of understanding that will better support efforts at both prevention and treatment. These data add credence to the concept that an infection can be a cause or contributor to obesity."

Dr. Sharon B. Meropol, a pediatrician at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital, says that further studies need to be done before it's decided that there is a definite link between the strain of virus and obesity.

"No one would know they had this specific strain of virus. Honestly, it's not something I think you'd want your child tested for," she told AOL Health. "I'm not sure of the significance of the study. It was a very small study, 124 children. The problem with really small studies is that random chance can account for the results. If it was 1 million kids or even 500 that would be different and I'd be more comfortable with it."

Meropol says that just one less obese child would have made the difference and the study would have been negative.

"We have to recognize that if the results of a study are positive, it's more interesting and more likely to be published. But the results could happen by chance alone, and they need to be confirmed," she says.

In theory, if obesity was linked to this strain of virus, they could come up with a vaccine for the virus, says Meropol. But first they'd have to confirm that there's a causal situation.

"My second issue is that both antibodies and obesity were measured at the same time," she says. "It's possible that obesity made them more susceptible to the virus, and not the other way around. Third, it doesn't fit with the things we know about obesity, which tends to run in families. Does the virus run in families? What are we going to do with this information? Scientists need more than one study."

Meropol suggests that parents focus on the things they can do to combat obesity. "Just eliminating sugared beverages can make a big impact. And limiting TV to 1-2 hours a day so that families can pursue a more active lifestyle."

http://www.aolhealth.com/2010/09/20/study-links-obesity-to-childhood-virus/?icid=main|main|dl3|sec3_lnk2|171679

There are so many different issues with obesity that people really can't judge an overweight person as lazy or whatever and be accurate.