If obesity seems to be spreading like a virus, that could be because it is. We’re now closer to understanding how adenovirus-36 (Ad-36), thought to be responsible for some cases of obesity, causes fat cells to grow.
Last year Nikhil Dhurandhar at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge showed that Ad-36 causes precursor cells to differentiate into fat cells, and could promote obesity in humans and animals. Now he has shown that a single viral gene is responsible for triggering this process, meaning that one day it may be possible to treat “viral obesity” by altering the action of…
