Obese kids and AD-36: Is obesity caused by a virus?
© 2010-2015 Gwen Dewar, all rights reserved
Obesity rates among children are skyrocketing, and it’s clear that many factors are involved.
Kids are eating more and exercising less. They might also be gaining weight because they don’t sleep enough at night.
But what about contagion? Is it possible that some kids are getting fatter because they’ve been infected with a virus?
The concept has been dubbed “infectobesity" (Dhurandhar 2001) and it would have been dismissed as outlandish decades ago. But in recent years, researchers have discovered evidence that
viruses contribute to all sorts of chronic medical conditions (Ewald
2002). Now they are adding obesity to the list, and the culprit of
interest is adenovirus-36, also known as AD-36.
AD-36 is one of many viruses that cause the common cold. But
unlike other strains, AD-36 has an alarming side effect. Add it to a
Petri dish of human stem cells, and those cells begin making fat cells.
Lots of fat cells.
The virus appears to speed up the rate at which fat cells develop. And it may make fat cells grow larger, too.
Does this mean that human beings who are exposed to the virus will get fatter?
The classic way to answer such a question is with a randomized,
double-blind study. Inject some people with adenovirus-36, and other
people with saline solution. Follow up with years of observation and see
who gets fatter.
Of course, there are major ethical problems with such a study. So researchers have pursued other lines of evidence:
• In experiments on chickens, rodents, and monkeys, the animals
exposed to adenovirus-36 got fatter—in some cases packing on more than 4
times as much weight as did controls (Atkinson 2007; Dhurandhar et al
• In clinical studies conducted around the world, researchers have found
that obese and overweight people are more likely to test positive for adenovirus-36
antibodies—evidence that they had been exposed to the virus in the past
(Yamada et al 2012; Atkinson 2007).
• In tests of an adenovirus-36 vaccine, vaccinated and unvaccinated mice were both exposed to the live virus. Subsequently, the unvaccinated mice experienced a 17% increase in body weight. They also showed lower levels of inflammation (Na and Nam 2014).
And obese children?
Adenovirus-36 has been linked with child obesity in a variety of studies (Parra-Rojas et al 2013). For example, in a study of American children, 15 out of 67 obese kids tested positive for antibodies to the virus. Only 4 out of 57 normal weight children tested positive (Gabbert et al 2010).
So obese kids were more likely to have been exposed to AD. And
that’s not all. Obese children who tested positive were heavier than obese children who tested negative.
Principal investigator Jeffrey B. Schwimmer explains in a press release video clip:
“When we looked only at obese children, those obese children with
evidence of infection by adenovirus-36 weighed on average 35 pounds
more than did obese children who did not have evidence of infection with
It's an interesting point, particularly considering the
alternative hypothesis--that obese kids are more likely to get infected
with AD-36 because they have poorer immune systems. If this were the case, it's not clear why obese children who are AD-36 positive should weigh more than obese children who are AD-36 negative.
Studies like this leave many questions unanswered. For instance, some
normal-weight kids test positive for antibodies. Why aren't they
Maybe they were exposed only recently and the effects haven’t yet
emerged. But it’s also possible that the virus affects some people
differently, or that some infections are more severe than others. And of
course some people may work especially hard to fight the accumulation
of fat. More research is needed.
But the case for infectobesity remains compelling. And the timing
seems right. As Richard Atkinson notes, the virus was first discovered
by researchers in 1978, just before the worldwide epidemic of obesity
took off (Atkinson 2007).
Moreover, adenovirus-36 isn’t the only virus associated with
obesity in humans. Researchers in India found that obese people who
tested positive for antibodies to the SMAM-1 virus were significantly
heavier than obese people who tested negative (Dhurandhar et al 1997).
More such viruses may be identified in the future.
Can we do anything about infectobesity?
Right now, parents wishing to prevent infection have few options but the obvious ones: Teach kids
to wash their hands, avoid touching their faces, and take other measures
to avoid germs.
But, as noted above, researchers are testing a new vaccine against adenovirus-36.
In a few years, it may come on the market. An “obesity vaccine" may
become a regular part of pediatric visits.
Until then, nervous skinny people should note that this research doesn’t justify putting obese people in quarantine. Adenovirus-36 is a cold virus, and people are contagious when they
are suffering from the cold symptoms--not months later when they’ve
begun to gain weight. As Jeffrey Schwimmer tells Science News, “It’s the
skinny person with a cold you have to watch out for."
And perhaps we shouldn’t resent this virus too much. In many--but
not all--studies, AD-36 is also linked with lower cholesterol levels
(Atkinson et al 2007; Na et al 2009). And for most of human history,
people were mostly concerned with getting enough to eat. A virus that
helped you body store fat would have been a good thing.
Is AD-36 one of the first human viruses known to benefit
people—at least under certain conditions? I wonder. As reader Simon
Waters has reminded me, there are the viruses that benefit us
indirectly, by making us immune to other, closely related pathogens. But
are there any other viruses that have more direct effects? I look
forward to finding out.
References: Obese kids and AD-36
Atkinson RL. 2007. Viruses as an etiology of obesity. Mayo Clin Proc. 82(10):1192-8.
Dhurandhar NV. 2001. Infectobesity: Obesity of Infectious Origin. Journal of Nutrition 131:2794S-2797S.
Dhurandhar NV, Kulkarni PR, Ajinkya SM, Sherikar AA, and Atkinson
RL.1997. Association of adenovirus infection with human obesity. Obes
Res. 1997 Sep;5(5):464-9.
Ewald PW. 2002. Plague Time: The New Germ Theory of Disease. New York: Anchor Press.
Gabbert C, Donahue M, Arold J, and Schwimmer JB. 2010.
Adenovirus 36 and Obesity in Children and Adolescents. Pediatrics.
Published online September 20, 2010 (doi:10.1542/peds.2009-3362).
Na HN and Nam JH. 2014. Proof-of-concept for a virus-induced obesity vaccine; vaccination against the obesity agent adenovirus 36. Int. J. Obes. 38:1470–1474.
Na HN, Hong YM, Kim J, Kim HK, Jo I, and Nam JH. 2009.
Association between human adenovirus-36 and lipid disorders in Korean
schoolchildren. Int J Obes (Lond). 2010 Jan;34(1):89-93.
Parra-Rojas I, Del Moral-Hernández O, Salgado-Bernabé AB, Guzmán-Guzmán IP, Salgado-Goytia L, and Muñoz-Valle JF. 2013. Adenovirus-36 seropositivity and its relation with obesity and metabolic profile in children. Int J Endocrinol. 2013:463194.
Ponterio E and Gnessi L. 2015. Adenovirus 36 and Obesity: An Overview. Viruses. 7(7):3719-40.
Yamada T, Hara K, Kadowaki T. 2012. Association of adenovirus 36 infection with obesity and metabolic markers in humans: a meta-analysis of observational studies. PLoS ONE. 7(7)e4203.
Content last modified 9/2015