You could have a bad case of the Obesity bug', according to American researchers who believe they may have stumbled on a previously undiscovered cause of human obesity. A series of studies on chickens and mice, reported in the current issue of the International Journal of Obesity, has led researchers to suggest that a common virus is able to infect fat cells, causing them to multiply and leading to obesity. People should know there is very little we can do about the virus right now - and we don't know that it causes obesity in humans for sure,' says Dr Mikil Dhurandhar, now chair of obesity research at Wayne State University in Detroit who discovered the obesity bug while working on his PhD thesis in Bombay. Dr Dhurandhar also found in obese Bombay residents who tested positive for the virus. The Detroit study has shown that infected animals have high levels of the virus in their fat cells but none in their muscle cells.
Weight gain has to be related to energy intake and expenditure.
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