Obesity begets obesity Obesity begets obesity, according to a study I'm sure you heard about this summer. It was all over the news for a couple of days. Harvard researchers followed more than 12,000 subjects for about 32 years and found that if you have an obese friend, spouse, or sibling, chances are good that you'll develop obesity too. The lead author of that study assured the Washington Post that they weren't saying obesity is literally caused by a virus. And that's why this recent headline jumped out at me: "Common Virus May Contribute to Obesity in Some People" Yikes! The obesity epidemic is a REAL epidemic! Well…maybe. The virus claim comes from a laboratory study in which a virus that causes human infections transformed fat tissue stem cells into fat cells. Whether this can actually happen in the body is still unknown, so it's a little too early to start rounding up obese and overweight people and quarantining them in obesity virus camps. But it's certainly not too early to dream of the rich rewards that treating obesity virus might bring! A press release from the American Chemical Society speculates that the study results "could lead to a vaccine or antiviral medication to help fight viral obesity in the future." Somewhere, deep in a drug company laboratory, scientists are working around the clock to develop the first antiviral drug to address obesity. Oh, you know it's coming. Sources:
"Obesity Spreads in Social Circles as Trends Do, Study Indicates" Rob Stein, The Washington Post, 7/26/07, washingtonpost.com
"Common Virus May Contribute to Obesity in Some People" Press release of the American Chemical Society, 8/20/07, eurekalert.org | 
