A viral cause of weight gain?
No, I'm not crazy.
Hi there,
For 2024, my goal is to stay curious and keep digging into the new research on health and genetics.
I'm going to explain some research today that most of you are immediately going to assume is wrong. I get it. I was initially skeptical, and everyone I've talked to about it looks at me like I have two heads.
Let me set the stage:
The obesity rate hit an inflection point around 1980 with a linear upward trend.
Everyone in the health and nutrition world has their pet theory about this: The change in seed oil consumption, too much sugar, not enough meat, too much saturated fat, increased pesticide exposure... Fitness people like to chime in with too much sitting or not enough exercise. Cynics point to not smoking as much.
There's one graphic going around that blames the food pyramid for the obesity epidemic. (I don't think people pay that much attention to the food pyramid, which is now a circle.)
What if the cause of the obesity epidemic is a virus?
It sounds a little crazy, but there are hundreds of solid research studies showing that at least one (probably two) species of adenovirus directly infects fat cells and can cause significant weight gain.
In the 1990s, researchers identified an adenovirus that caused chickens to gain a lot of weight. This sparked further research into human adenoviruses. Researchers identified adenovirus-36 and adenovirus-5, which infect adipose tissue (fat cells).
Since the 1990s, there have been hundreds of studies showing that infecting animals with adenovirus-36 causes increased fat cell creation and weight gain. In addition, hundreds of epidemiologic studies have shown that adenovirus-36 infection doubles or triples the risk of obesity in children. A recent meta-analysis combined data from a number of studies and found an ~80% increase in the risk of obesity in adults (~130% increase in children) who were positive for antibodies to adenovirus-36.
What does this have to do with an inflection point in obesity rates in 1980? One intriguing study in 2012 showed that adenovirus-36 seropositivity doubled from the 90s to the mid-2000s.[ref] This parallels the rise in women in the labor force and children in daycare. Another possible piece of the puzzle is a study explaining the first identification of adenovirus-36 was in 1978 (the other human adenoviruses had been known for decades before that).[ref]
Does a viral infection explain every case of obesity? Of course not! Diet and physical activity play a role, as do changes in the gut microbiome, exposure to all kinds of endocrine disruptors, etc. Weight gain is multifactorial.
Read the article if you are interested in learning more. I cover the statistics on how much high sugar consumption increases obesity (10% increased risk) vs. adenovirus 36 infection.
My goal here is not to lay all the blame on a virus, but rather to point out that there is more to the story than we seem to be told by doctors, nutritionists, and health coaches. When we just skim the surface in understanding a problem, we tend to just do the same things over and over with the same (lack of) results.
I could weave conspiracy theories about why the research on adenovirus-36 isn't being talked about - nor a solution to it being sought. Perhaps some kind of intrigue because the virus was from a lab leak in the 70s? Is it that as a society we are programmed to blame gluttony? Or is it simply that there is no money to be had in understanding a viral cause of obesity? I'm sure you can all come up with some good explanations here...
Stay curious, y'all!
~ Debbie
Adenoviruses: Causing Weight Gain and Obesity
Key takeaways:
~ Obesity rates were steady for decades, and then started rising sharply around 1980.
~ There are multiple causes of obesity and infection with adenovirus 36 is clearly shown in research to be one cause.
~ Research studies clearly show that adenovirus 36 infection of adipose tissue causes slow weight gain for a portion of the population.
~ Genetics plays a role in susceptibility to viruses as well as variation in the genes related to the creation of fat cells.
Upcoming articles:
Long QT syndrome
Genes related to highly sensitive people
familial hypobetalipedma
PFOAs and PFAs
Outsmarting heartburn
Updates to a bunch of articles
Book on histamine science.
What I've been reading:
1) Associations of adenovirus-reactive immunoglobulins with atrial fibrillation and body mass index
A 2023 study showing that patients with AFib were twice as likely to have adenovirus antibodies. From the introduction section: "Adenovirus can be isolated from myocardial biopsies of patients with nonischemic cardiomyopathy. Adenovirus interferes with connexins junctions thus altering the cell-to-cell communications or electrical coupling of myocytes. Uncoupling of gap junctions leads to chaotic electrical activity in the atria or ventricles of the heart"
Increased fluoride exposure causes a decrease in testosterone and an increase in estradiol in males. This study adds that the interaction of low zinc plus high fluoride exposure causes an interactive effect. The conclusion is that increasing zinc intake may mitigate the effect of fluoride on changes in sex hormones.
Related article: Fluoride: Understanding Its Effects on Health