September is National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month. A new study has been published today, September 20, 2010 on the online version of the journal, Pediatrics that points to an infectious origin for childhood obesity. The latest study at UCSD School of Medicine reports that a viral infection in childhood may be the cause of obesity, according to a new University of California, San Diego study. Also see the September 20, 2010 news release, "Childhood viral infection may be a cause of obesity."
Read the abstract of the study at Pediatrics. The study is, "Adenovirus 36 and Obesity in Children and Adolescents." Pediatrics (doi:10.1542/peds.2009-3362).
Is this emerging idea about obesity related to the concern parents have over foods in Sacramento schools they think are contributing to obesity or a risk of type 2 diabetes? The emerging idea that obesity may have an infectious origin now has new support in a cross-sectional study by University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. Researchers at UCSD medical school who found that children exposed to a particular strain of adenovirus were significantly more likely to be obese.
Jeffrey B. Schwimmer, MD, associate professor of clinical pediatrics at UC San Diego, and colleagues examined 124 children, ages 8 to 18, for the presence of antibodies specific to adenovirus 36 (AD36), one of more than 50 strains of adenovirus known to infect humans and cause a variety of respiratory, gastrointestinal and other infections. AD36 is the only human adenovirus currently linked to human obesity, according to the EurekaAlert! news release.
Slightly more than half of the children in the study (67) were considered obese, based on a Body Mass Index or BMI in the 95th percentile or greater. The researchers detected neutralizing antibodies specific to AD36 in 19 of the children (15 percent). The majority of these AD36-positive children (78 percent) were obese, with AD36 antibodies much more frequent in obese children (15 of 67) than in non-obese children (4 of 57).
Children who were AD36-positive weighed almost 50 pounds more, on average, than children who were AD36-negative. 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.
"This amount of extra weight is a major concern at any age, but is especially so for a child," said Schwimmer, who is also director of Weight and Wellness at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego. "Obesity can be a marker for future health problems like heart disease, liver disease, and diabetes. An extra 35 to 50 pounds is more than enough to greatly increase those risks." Download video of Schwimmer describing findings.
Schwimmer said he hopes this research will help shift some of the burden that falls so heavily upon obese people, in particular children, according to the news release. "Many people believe that obesity is one's own fault or the fault of one's parents or family. 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."
While an association between AD36 and obesity in both animals and human adults has been previously described, the particulars remain poorly understood. For example, it is not known how often or under what circumstances AD36 infects, why the virus affects people differently and whether weight gain is the result of an active infection or a lasting change in a person's metabolism.
In cell cultures, Schwimmer said, the virus infects pre-adipocytes or immature fat cells, prompting them to develop more quickly and proliferate in greater numbers than normal. "This might be the mechanism for obesity," Schwimmer said, "but more work needs to be done."
So as Sacramento parents try to find out what to serve children at home or consider what students are eating at school, it may be more related to a specific virus infection in childhood than to a particular type of food, but of course, more research is needed to find out what factors contribute to childhood obesity more--food or an infection in childhood of a specific adenovirus.
About childhood obesity
Obesity is defined by body mass index (BMI), a calculation based on a person's weight and height. For children and adolescents (ages 2-19), the BMI value is plotted on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's growth charts to determine a corresponding BMI-for-age percentile. Overweight is defined as a BMI at or above the 85 percentile, but lower than the 95 percentile. Obesity is at or above the 95th percentile for children of the same age and sex.
An estimated 17 percent of American children and adolescents are obese. Obese children have a 70 to 80 percent chance of becoming obese adults.
Many risk factors for childhood obesity have been identified: poor eating habits or overeating, lack of exercise, family history, ethnicity, psychological problems such as stress or depression, family circumstances or socioeconomic status. Overall, obesity is linked to more than 300,000 deaths in the United States each year, with an annual estimated total economic cost of nearly $100 billion, according to the CDC.
Co-authors of the paper are Charles Gabbert of the department of Pediatrics and Medicine at the UC San Diego School of Medicine; Michael Donohue of the Division of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, UC San Diego; and John Arnold (CDR, USN) of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Pediatrics, Naval Medical Center, San Diego.
Funding for the latest study came, in part, from grants from the National Institutes of Health. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect those of the NIH or the U.S. Navy.
If your child has been diagnosed as obese, should you look to a virus infection as the cause or to the food your child eats inside or outside the home? As more research is needed, you might keep a record of your child's virus infections to see whether any issue with obesity began before or after recovering from a specific virus. On the other hand, how would you know whether it was the particular adenovirus infection researched in the study? The question is whether more than one type of virus infection might be linked to obesity, childhood viruses are common. And what affects a child in one way may not affect another child in the same manner.
Comments
Ever think that maybe all the junk food and lack of exercise might be the culprit? Perhaps the toxins, pollution, preservatives and GMO foods adds a little weight too..
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