Friday, December 3, 2010
Polluted Air Increases Obesity Risk in Young Animals
Researchers did a study to show that animals in more polluted areas were not only at risk for being obese but also at risk for having type 2 diabetes. They did a study to where some mice were put in an area where there was little pollution and a lot of pollution. The next step was giving some mice a normal diet or a high-fat diet. They were then put in the air for six hours a day, five days a week, and for ten weeks. This would be equivalent to a life span of a toddler to an adolescence. After they did this they found that even the normal-diet mice in the area of high polluted areas had a higher glucose level than the animals in low polluted areas with high-fat diet even though they were more obese than the ones on the normal diet. After this study they concluded that pollution may lead to an increase in fat cell size and number. The size and number of cell size is what increases your chances of getting diseases such as diabetes. They are now doing a study in China to see if it has the same effects on humans. This may make people have a different effect on how they think about pollution today.
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This makes complete sense. The more food and trash on the ground, the better the animals eat. For example, I'm sure the pigeons in New York City eat much better than the ones in Bismarck, North Dakota. As far as diseases and such, that's just a byproduct I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteI did this article too sydney. I thought it was neat by the way scientist are finding out more causes of obestiy. The expirimenet they done with the mice really could relate to humans.
ReplyDeleteWhether the diseases are a biproduct or not it doesn't change the fact that the mice have them. Also, relating it to humans if the pollution is cut down then so would the toxins that are causing the sizes of fat cells to increase which would then make the number of people with diabetes decrease also. While this may not be the entire problem of obesity in mice or humans, at least it's a start.
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