McDonalds, Wii, Coca-Cola, trans fat, cars–a number of things have been blamed for our country’s child obesity epidemic. The latest culprit? The common cold.
According to MSNBC.com:
University of California, San Diego researchers found that obese children were far more likely to have antibodies to a specific strain of adenovirus than normal weight children, according to the report published early online in Pediatrics. Children who showed signs of infection with adenovirus 36 (AD36), a common cause of some colds and eye infections, were an average of 50 pounds heavier than those who had no antibodies to the virus.
“This shows that body weight regulation and the development of obesity are very complicated issues,” said the study’s senior author, Dr. Jeffrey Schwimmer, an associate professor of pediatrics at UC San Diego and director of Weight and Wellness at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. “It’s not simply a case that some children eat too much and others don’t. There are children who eat all the wrong things in all the wrong quantities who are not obese.”
Outside experts cautioned that the new research doesn’t prove that the virus causes weight gain — it’s entirely possible that obese kids are just more likely to get the virus.
Researchers studied 124 children, ages 8 to 18 years old. A little more than half were obese and the other half non-obese.
AD36 was present in 19 children (15 percent), and the majority of these children were obese (78 percent). Within the group of obese children, those with evidence of AD36 infection weighed an average of 35 pounds more than obese children who were AD36-negative.
The data supports a relationship between obesity and AD36 in children and if more studies indicate that this virus leads to weight gain, “it would have considerable implications for the prevention and treatment of childhood obesity,” according to the study authors. Some experts are suggesting that a vaccine to the virus could be developed.