Dhurandhar's team has previously shown in three separate studies that within 3 weeks of the initial infection, chickens develop 60 to 75 percent more fat than uninfected birds. The mechanism behind this rapid weight gain remains a mystery, Dhurandhar says, but would appear to trace to some derangement of the animals' metabolism. Indeed, infected birds get fatter while eating the same amount of feed as svelter, uninfected broodmates. Explains Atkinson, it appears that the adenovirus infection effectively flips some biochemical switch within the birds so that they begin preferentially accumulating fat instead of lean tissue. The infection appears to turn the animals into couch potatoes, Dhurandhar says.
Heavy people tend to possess high concentrations of cholesterol and triglycerides in their blood.
No similar comparison can be made among lean individuals, because none of the 45 who were assayed carried the antibodies. Dhurandhar and Atkinson also observed a similar variation in triglyceride concentrations in the blood of the two groups of obese volunteers. Fat people aren't contagious Like a cold virus, AD-36 seems to remain infectious for only a short time. In laboratory studies, Dhurandhar has been able to isolate the live germ from animals 7 days after they had been deliberately infected. Three weeks later, no viable virus could be obtained from the animals, Atkinson says.