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A big fat idea
Virginia Business
January 2005
If
you’re carrying more pounds than you should, take
heart. The extra weight might not be all your fault.
A fledgling company in Richmond is marketing a blood
test to detect a virus that could be the real culprit.
That’s
a controversial idea but it’s not without supporting
evidence, says Dr. Richard Atkinson. He launched Obetech
in the Virginia Biotechnology Research Park in mid-2004
based on the blood test he developed. The test detects
the antibodies of a common and otherwise harmless adenovirus
— AD-36 — that Atkinson and fellow researcher
Nikhal Dhurandhar identified as an obesity trigger.
Studies done while Atkinson was on the faculty of the
University of Wisconsin showed that animals injected
with the virus became fat. Screenings of humans found
that about 30 percent of obese people had the virus,
while just 10 percent of normal-weight subjects did.
“Obese people get so beat up by the world. They’re
told, ‘This is your fault,’” Atkinson
says. “This says you’re not a bad person;
you’re an unlucky person.”
Atkinson, a Petersburg native, has been studying obesity
for 30 years. He has been on the faculties of the University
of Virginia School of Medicine and the Eastern Virginia
Medical School. He left Wisconsin last year to start
the company and chose Richmond because he wanted to
get closer to his grandchildren.
Right
now the company is just Atkinson and an assistant doing
the tests, which are marketed via the company’s
obesityvirus.com Web site for $100.
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