Infectobesity: a New Area for Microbiological and Virological Research

Ha-Na Na; Jae-Hwan Nam

doi:10.4167/jbv.2011.41.2.65

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Na and Nam: Infectobesity: a New Area for Microbiological and Virological Research

Review Article

J Bacteriol Virol 2011;41(2):65-76.

Published online: 18 January 2011

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4167/jbv.2011.41.2.65

Infectobesity: a New Area for Microbiological and Virological Research

Ha-Na Na, Jae-Hwan Nam^∗

Department of Biotechnology, The Catholic University, Gyeonggi-do, Korea

^∗Corresponding author: Jae-Hwan Nam, Ph.D. Department of Biotechnology, The Catholic University of Korea, 43-1 Yeokgok 2-dong, Wonmi-gu, Bucheon, Gyeonggi-do, 420-743, Korea. Phone: +82-2-2164-4852, Fax: +82-2-2164-4917 e-mail: jhnam@catholic.ac.kr

^∗∗ This study was supported by a grant from GRRC of the Catholic University of Korea, the Next-generation Biogreen21 Program (PJ007186) of the Rural Development Administration, and MKE and KOTEF through the Human Resource Training Project for Strategic Technology.

Revised 11 May 201130 May 2011 Accepted 13 June 2011

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Obesity is connected with numerous diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, atherosclerosis, cancer, and nervous system dysfunctions. Obesity is affected by genetic, environmental, and cultural factors. However, numerous studies indicate that several pathogens might cause obesity. This review discusses recent data and the characteristics of pathogens that are implicated in obesity. In particular, human adenovirus 36 (Ad36) is the most clearly implicated virus in human obesity. It was recently shown that obese groups from the USA, Korea, and Italy have a higher prevalence of serum antibodies against Ad36. The mechanisms of Ad36-induced obesity remain unclear. However, glucose uptake and inflammation are possible mechanisms of Ad36-induced obesity. Overall, this new understanding of causes of obesity has developed into the concept of ‘infectobesity’ and the possibility of developing a ‘vaccine’ or ‘therapeutic agents’ for obesity.

Keywords: Infectobesity, Adenovirus 36, Obesity

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Figure 1.

Increasing ratios of obese population are appeared all over the world as Europe, Asia, and USA. (A) Global obesity percentage. Obesity prevalence in the USA (B) and Korea (C). (1, 2)

Figure 2.

Effects of gut microbiota (25). Infection with gut microbiota increases body weight and free fatty acid in serum. It induces insulin resistance and reduces hepatic VLDL secretion. Therefore gut microbiota effects fatty liver production.

Figure 3.

Structure of human adenovirus 36 (38). Human adenovirus 36 is nonenveloped isosahedral structure and medium size (90~100 nm). Purified virion fraction is symmetry (rotational axes) and the architecture of the hexon-penton-relation becomes apparent.

Figure 4.

The structure of Ad36 (49). The genome length of Ad36 is 35,152 bp with the GC content at 57.2%. The organization of the 39 open reading frames (ORFs) was similar to that of other adenoviruses.

Figure 5.

Inflammation state in obesity (63). When adipocytes undergo hypertrophy, releasing chemokines that induce recruitment M1-polarized macrophages increased MCP-1 and IL-6.

Table 1.

Pathogens correlated with obesity (Reference 6~11)

	Year first reported	Animal model	Effect on Body weight	Effect on biochemical parameters	Association with human obesity
Scrapie	1968	Mice	↑Body weight due to fat accumulation	Brain function alteration	Not reported
Chlamydia pneumoniae	2000	Human	↑Significantly higher BMI	Association with coronary heart disease	Partially yes
Gut microbiota	2004	Mice	↑whole body fat 57% ↑epidemal fat 69%	Increased insulin resistance and glucose	Yes
CDV	1982	Mice	↑number and size of fat cell	Alters hypothalamic integrity	Not reported
RAV-7	1983	Embryos-chicken line	↑obesity ↑hyperlipidemia	Hepatomegaly, anemia and immune suppression	No
SMAM-1	1990	Chicken	↑excessive visceral fat	Enlarged liver, kidney, hepatic fatty infiltration and congestion	Partially yes
BDV	1991	Rats	↑serum glucose ↑triglyceride	Inflammation lesions and viral replication in hypothalamus	Not reported
Ad-37	2002	Chicken	↑obesity	Differentiated 3T3-L1	No
Ad-5	2002	Mice	↑Obesity	Important role of predispositioin to obesity	Not reported
Ad-36	2000	Chicken, Mice, Rhesus and marmoset monkeys, Rats	↑body weight ↑visceral fat ↑epidermal fat ↑inguinal fat	E4 orf-1 Increase adipose tissue, low levels of serum cholesterol and TG	Strongly yes Epidemiological data

Table 2.

Subgroups of human adenoviruses (Reference 39)

Subgroup (species)	Hemagglutination groups	Serotypes	Percentage of GC in DNA	Disease
A	IV (little or no agglutination)	12, 18, 31	48~49	Meningoencephalitis
B	I (complete agglutination of monkey erythrocytes)	3, 7, 11, 14, 16, 21, 34, 35, 50	50~52	Acute respiratory disease
C	III (partial agglutination of rat erythrocytes)	1, 2, 5, 6	57~59	Acute febrile pharyngitis
D	II (complete agglutination of rat erythrocytes)	8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22~30, 32, 33, 36~39, 42~49, 51	57~61	Epidemic Keratoconjunctivitis
E	III	4	57~59	Pneumonia
F	III	40, 41	50~52	Gastoenteritis
G	–	52	55	Gastoenteritis

Table 3.

Homology of amino acid sequences with Ad36 (Reference 49)

	Ad8	Ad9	Ad19	Ad22	Ad28	Ad37	Ad49	Ad53
Pentonbase	91.4	92.1	93.3	92.3	92.3	90.6	91.7	90.6
Hexon	91	90.5	90.1	91	90.5	90.7	91.8	91
CR1β	46.5	48.6	48.3	46	51	45.8	85	47.1
CR1γ	69.9	64.3	87	69	61	70.1	66.9	69.6
Fiber	69	64.3	62.4	68.7	65	62.4	66	63.5
ORF4	90.8	91.7	89.2	91	83.5	90	91.7	91.7
ORF3	88.9	88	88	86	87.2	88	88	88.9
ORF2	86.2	86.9	86.9	86	93.8	86.9	87.7	86.2
ORF1	84	92	47.2^a	91.2	91.2	47.2^a	91.2	84.8

^a Shorter proteins due to frameshift

Table 4.

Prevalence of Ad36 in human populations

Children (%)		Obese	Overweight
	Korean cohort 1 (57)	30^a (25/84)
	Korean cohort 2 (56)	29 (74/259)
	US cohort 1 (54)	22 (15/67)
Adults (%)
	Korean cohort 3 (in press IJO)	30 (54/180)	40 (72/180)
	US cohort 2 (43)	30 (108/252)
	US cohort 3 (51)	34 (68/104)
	Europe cohort 1 (55)	65 (51/150)
	Europe cohort 2 (50)	6 (28/509)

^a percentage (positive / total number)

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