4 ms·

There's actually a lot of data on this because adenoviruses are popular vaccine vectors of study right now, and the selected serotype must be one that as few pe

There's actually a lot of data on this because adenoviruses are popular vaccine vectors of study right now, and the selected serotype must be one that as few people as possible have titers against, so researchers test random people for immunity. For example, [0] (2010) reports that ~5% of people in the US were positive for Ad36, 35% Thailand, 52% South Africa, 91%(!) Malawi, 88% Cameroon, 48% Botswana, 43% Brazil. Malawi, Cameroon, Thailand and Botswana are solidly in the lower % obesity parts of the map that you linked to, while the US has the lowest antibody prevalence and highest obesity. They don't have Ad36 data for Europe unfortunately, but ... Ad36 is not the only adipogenic (fat-causing) serotype. Ad5, 9, 31, 36 and 37 are all correlated or linked to being adipogenic [1]. The above paper [0] has numbers for Ad5 if you're interested: Europe was 39% negative, US 31%, the African countries 10-13%, Brazil 18%. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19925902 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19925902 [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26352001 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26352001

fragsworth 10y ago
Depending on how it spreads, the virus could appear to be more common in populations where there has been historic starvation, because it seems like it would help you survive in those situations.
- VLM 10y ago
  And the flip side of the coin is it would cause extreme obesity if by some economic miracle carb intake were totally unlimited and trended toward infinity. So it would eventually (on a very long scale) be bred out of economic areas of infinite carb availability. But eventually is far too long and too much human suffering, so temporarily we're very very fat. As a hypothesis you could create a mathematical model where the faster a country industrializes or otherwise moves beyond bare subsistence and periodic famine, the harder the spike of obesity. That's not a bad match to existing obesity maps, especially when the obesity map is corrected for country of origin not current geographic location.
logicallee 10y ago
I greatly would have preferred to see Western Europe instead of the countries in your second paragraph, because while tastes and convenience differ, income is comparable in European capitals especially, and people can eat at McDonald's if they want, with the same impact on their budget. Whereas some of your other countries differ substantially in all metrics from N. America (specifically the U.S. In particular the U.S. has per capital income that is a multiple of each of those countries [1] - in terms of purchasing power, Thailand, South Africa, Malawi, Cameroon, Botswana, Brazil are at $16,130 - $13,209 - $1,126 - $3,148 - $16,415 - $15,646 respectively (the hyphens are just my separators) to the U.S. at $56,084. The food choices and culture would also very radically differ. While Western Europe and North America have differing food cultures, habits, and especially convenience and availability, at least the purchasing power is comparable, the worst offenders (e.g. cola with sugar, cheap fast food) are equally available and many cultural aspects (general industrialization and urbanization, amount people work physically) are at least roughly similar. The countries you listed are just very different across all of these points, as far as I know. Even an American who goes to Thailand isn't going to eat the same as in America - whereas while going travelling in Europe, they well might eat very comparably. So while you support the argument I was making, I actually would prefer to see data about incidence in Western Europe - not the countires you listed. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)... - (I'm using the first column, International Monetary Fund (2015))

fragsworth 10y ago

Depending on how it spreads, the virus could appear to be more common in populations where there has been historic starvation, because it seems like it would help you survive in those situations.

VLM 10y ago
And the flip side of the coin is it would cause extreme obesity if by some economic miracle carb intake were totally unlimited and trended toward infinity. So it would eventually (on a very long scale) be bred out of economic areas of infinite carb availability. But eventually is far too long and too much human suffering, so temporarily we're very very fat. As a hypothesis you could create a mathematical model where the faster a country industrializes or otherwise moves beyond bare subsistence and periodic famine, the harder the spike of obesity. That's not a bad match to existing obesity maps, especially when the obesity map is corrected for country of origin not current geographic location.

logicallee 10y ago

I greatly would have preferred to see Western Europe instead of the countries in your second paragraph, because while tastes and convenience differ, income is comparable in European capitals especially, and people can eat at McDonald's if they want, with the same impact on their budget. Whereas some of your other countries differ substantially in all metrics from N. America (specifically the U.S. In particular the U.S. has per capital income that is a multiple of each of those countries [1] - in terms of purchasing power, Thailand, South Africa, Malawi, Cameroon, Botswana, Brazil are at $16,130 - $13,209 - $1,126 - $3,148 - $16,415 - $15,646 respectively (the hyphens are just my separators) to the U.S. at $56,084. The food choices and culture would also very radically differ. While Western Europe and North America have differing food cultures, habits, and especially convenience and availability, at least the purchasing power is comparable, the worst offenders (e.g. cola with sugar, cheap fast food) are equally available and many cultural aspects (general industrialization and urbanization, amount people work physically) are at least roughly similar. The countries you listed are just very different across all of these points, as far as I know. Even an American who goes to Thailand isn't going to eat the same as in America - whereas while going travelling in Europe, they well might eat very comparably. So while you support the argument I was making, I actually would prefer to see data about incidence in Western Europe - not the countires you listed. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)... - (I'm using the first column, International Monetary Fund (2015))