Abstract
Diet and sedentary lifestyle, interacting with "thrifty" genes, are widely accepted as the principal cause of the current global obesity epidemic. However, a number of alternative etiologies for obesity have been proposed, including "drifty" genes, viruses, bacteria, environmental toxins, social network effects, maternal imprinting, sleep deprivation, and others. These Grand Rounds reviews the background of some of these unconventional ideas and evidence for or against their roles in the obesity epidemic.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 481-491 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | American Journal of the Medical Sciences |
Volume | 340 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Dec 2010 |
Keywords
- Bacteria
- Genes
- Obesity
- Toxin
- Virus
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Medicine