問題詳情

The results are easy to see. In numerous countries around the world, the number of overweight andobese people is increasing at such a rapid rate that the term “obesity epidemic” is common parlance. TheUnited States is notorious for the girth of its citizens, with 60 percent of adults and 13 percent of childreneither overweight or obese. But obesity rates among children are over 25 percent in Egypt, Chile, Peru,and Mexico. And in some parts of Africa, obesity affects more children than malnutrition. In Moroccoand Zambia, over 15 percent of four-year-olds are obese.There is little consensus on the causes of this worldwide epidemic. Doctors and nutritionists insistthat it’s a simple relationship between calories consumed and energy expended. Eating more food than weburn through daily activities and exercise results in weight gain. Consumer advocates point to the foodindustry and its promotion of processed foods and sugary soft drinks, often marketed directly to children,while some parents blame themselves for allowing their children to watch television or play computergames when they could be playing outside.But the international scope of the problem and the alarming speed of the increase in obesity rateshave led some to believe that there are other factors at work. Doctors have always admitted that geneticsand body chemistry, for example, thyroid gland function, play a role in some cases of obesity. Now, LeahWhigham and a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin have identified another culprit: viruses.Specifically, they’re adenoviruses, a group of about 50 viruses that cause upper respiratory infections (inother words, common colds) as well as infections of the eyes and digestive tract. This surprising idea wasfirst suggested by Dr. Nikhil Dhurandhar, who observed that many people who had been exposed to achicken adenovirus were overweight. In later research, the human adenovirus AD-36 was administered to chickens fed the same diet as a control group of chickens. The chickens that had received the virusshowed a significant increase in body fat. And in humans, 30 percent of obese people tested positive forantibodies to AD-36 compared with only 5 percent of the rest of the population.All of this suggests that AD-36, along with another adenovirus identified by Whigham’s team, mayplay a role in the unusual rise in worldwide obesity. Unfortunately, even if testing reveals exposure to oneof the viruses, there is little an obese person can do besides the conventional measures of increasingexercise and restricting calories. The good news is that identifying exactly which viruses contribute toweight gain in humans could lead to the development of vaccines to prevent people from catching them inthe first place.
35. The main idea of this article is _____.
(A) the increase in obesity worldwide
(B) one surprising cause of the obesity epidemic
(C) ways to increase exercise and improve diet
(D) the effects of obesity on humans

參考答案

答案：B
難度：適中0.529412
統計：A(3),B(9),C(4),D(0),E(0)

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