A doctor in the US has recently identified a link between viruses, such as the common cold and weight gain, implying that it?s possible to ?catch? obesity.

Dr Nikhil Dhurandhar from Louisiana has been carrying out animal and human studies on the virus, Adenovirus-36 for over a decade.

He claims that a common cold virus can interfere with our normal body processes and make us fat.

He believes it could be one of the reasons why some people to put on weight quicker than others.

After taking a large number of blood samples from patients at a clinic for the obese, the doctor?s team; based at the Pennington Biomedical Research Centre, now have a recorded 1,000 patients, all of which appear to have direct links with obesity and infection with the virus.

The doctors also tested the blood for antibodies to Adenovirus-36 and discovered that 20% of the patients had previously encountered the virus and were significantly heavier than their antibody negative counterparts.

A similar study showed that people suffering from morbid obesity were nearly three times more likely to have the virus than people that weren?t obese.

However, even those amongst the non obese group who had been in contact with the virus, were heavier than average.

Dr Dhurandhar says: "When this virus goes to the fat tissue it creates more copies of itself and in the process, it increases the number of fat cells, which may explain why people get fat when infected with this virus."

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