The World Health Organization announced in 2020 that the number of people over the age of 60 had exceeded, for the first time, that of children under the age of five. Medical and healthcare development, together with improved quality of life, have meant that the world’s inhabitants, in general, are living longer. Without going any further, the latest reports predict that by 2050, more than one in five people will be over 60 years old. Faced with this scenario, the need to find effective strategies to improve the quality of life of the elderly has never been more urgent.
To address this challenge, a research team with the presence of the IISPV and the URV, in collaboration with Costa Concentrados Levantinos and the Technological Research Center of the Basque Country, is launching a project to develop a drink specifically designed to improve immunity of the elderly It is not a medicine, but a functional drink made from natural ingredients selected for their immunological properties, which will also incorporate “nutrients to strengthen the immune system” that contribute to healthy ageing.
The approach adopted by this project, called IMMUGOLD, is supported by scientific evidence on the impact of adequate nutrition on the health and resilience of the immune system as we age. This is expertise provided by the NFOC-SALUT Functional Nutrition, Oxidation and Cardiovascular Disease Research Group of the IISPV and Rovira i Virgili University, led by Rosa Solà, professor of Medicine at the same university.
Functional foods
They are those foods that, due to the ingredients they contain, can have beneficial effects on health when consumed regularly. There are many types, focused on controlling cholesterol levels, taking care of the digestive system or, in this case, improving the immune system. The development of these products requires close collaboration between researchers and food industry professionals to ensure that each food is formulated precisely and based on sound scientific evidence.
Once designed, at the beginning of 2027, the drink will undergo rigorous clinical trials to evaluate its effectiveness and, if it passes, it could become a useful tool to improve public health. The IMMUGOLD project, carried out jointly by researchers from the Center for Technological Research of the Basque Country (AZTI), from the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) and professionals from Costa Concentrados Levantinos, represents a significant step in the search for science-based solutions that address healthy aging and strengthen the immune system of the elderly, reducing the incidence of infections and chronic diseases.
The Rotary Club Tarragona has donated €4,000 to Mamapop Solidarity Tarragona, a donation that was made possible thanks to the sale of the Les Cartes game promoted by the organization. The amount will be added to the profits of the Mamapop solidarity concert held last November in Tarragona and will be entirely allocated to breast cancer research at the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute (IISPV).
The donation was presented this Monday during a dinner held at the Hotel SB Ciutat de Tarragona. The event was attended by the director and manager of the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute, Dr. Joan Vendrell and Francesc López, respectively. They had the opportunity to share with the attendees the work carried out at the IISPV. Manel Simon, promoter and artistic director of Mamapop, thanked Rotary Tarragona for its collaboration with the project. “In our second year in Tarragona, we continue to add support and network in the territory with the common objective of contributing to research,” he added.
The cards, illustrated by Joan Noguera Figueras, represent representative elements of Tarragona such as figures from the Popular Procession, historical monuments, modernist buildings and the city’s four castelleras groups. Around twenty points of sale in the city have collaborated in the sale of the card games with solidarity objectives in recent months: the Association of Women of the House of the Sea, the Via Augusta gas station, the Urban Property Chamber, Casa Guasch, the Gabri i Sirvent ice cream parlors, the Botiga del Cafè, Madonna Moda, the IISPV; as well as the pharmacies Dolors Andreu, Irene Escudero, Emma Esplugues, Maria Esther Fernández, Silvia Mas, Joaquim Nolla, Joan Sabaté and Antoni Salazar.
The charity Mamapop held last November in Tarragona reached one thousand tickets sold and in the coming weeks the total profits will be donated to the IISPV.
About Mamapop
The Mamapop charity concert was born in Lleida in November 2014 with the aim of obtaining funding for scientific research on breast cancer. In Lleida, Mamapop allocates its profits to the Lleida Biomedical Research Institute, becoming the first source of private funding for IRBLleida for breast cancer research with €232,800. In the regions of Tarragona, collaboration is carried out with the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute (IISPV) along the same lines and so far the contribution has been €23,699. Mamapop 2024 in Tarragona has had the collaboration of different companies and individuals and has been possible thanks to the support of Fundación Repsol, Factor Energia, the Port of Tarragona, the Tarragona City Council and the Tarragona Provincial Council.
About IISPV
The Pere Virgili Health Research Institute (IISPV) integrates biomedical research led by the Camp de Tarragona and Terres de l’Ebre regions. It is the instrument that has been provided to the university hospitals of both health regions (the Joan XXIII University Hospital of Tarragona, the Verge de la Cinta Hospital of Tortosa, the Sant Joan University Hospital of Reus and the Pere Mata University Hospital of Reus) and the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) to bring together and manage biomedical research and innovation in the region.
The researchers of the IISPV, the Hospital de Tortosa Verge de la Cinta and the Institut de l’Ebre who have made it possible will present this project yesterday at Investors Day, the closing event of two types of aid from the Knowledge Industry of the AGAUR
The TMAtech Molds, used in the field of research to analyze biopsy samples and investigate different pathologies, is one of the projects selected to be presented at the Investors Day conference, which took place this Thursday, January 23 in the Auditorium of the Faculty of Letters of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The objective of this day is to close the support plan for the INNOVATORS 2022 and PRODUCTE 2023 grants of the University and Research Grants Management Agency (AGAUR) of the Generalitat de Catalunya. In addition, this conference also had the purpose of exposing different innovative initiatives with business potential that have arisen from scientific research, so that the results and findings made can have a significant impact on society. This event had the presence of investors specialized in financing projects arising from research, from both public and private funds, who analyzed the presentations and gave feedback to the projects.
The TMAtech Mold project is the result of a team of researchers from the Research Group on Oncological Pathology and Bioinformatics of the IISPV (PO&B, for its acronym and based at the Tortosa Verge de la Cinta Hospital) and professors from the Institute of Ebro (IE). The molds of TMAtech Mold are an improved and more innovative version of the silicone molds currently available on the market, which are used to construct tissue microarrays or TMA (by its acronym in English) to analyze in a cost-effective way the stains of the patient biopsies.
The innovation in the manufacturing process of these molds allows the simultaneous analysis of different tissue samples, helping to quickly identify markers that indicate the prognosis of a disease. Other advantages in relation to current molds are their lower cost, the possibility of a more personalized use and, when they are commercialized, their application not only in research, but also in health centers, thanks to obtaining a certification as a health product.
AGAUR, through Product aid, granted the team that is developing this technology 150,000 euros, as well as offering them a training plan so that they could train for a year in entrepreneurial, business and marketing skills, among others, to continue working in the project and commercialize the new molds in the market. Previously, the project had been financed by the Llavor grant with 50,000 euros and was also selected among the best projects to present at DemoDay 2023.
In addition, the TMAtech Mold project has also received funding from the GINJOL Patents Fund call, which supports the knowledge transfer projects of the CERCA centers. Thanks to this help, the team will be able to receive advice from consulting companies on intellectual property, business plan development, market and competitor studies, among others, which are key tools to successfully launch a project in the market.
Zaragoza, Wednesday, January 22, 2025. The greater the adherence to the Mediterranean diet of preschool students, the healthier their cardiometabolic profile. This is one of the conclusions obtained with the MED4CHILD questionnaire, a new tool to identify dietary patterns and their relationship with health in early stages of life. This project has been designed and developed by a team of researchers from the University of Zaragoza, the Aragón Health Research Institute (IIS Aragón), the Human Nutrition Unit of the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) and the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute (IISPV) and 5 other centers in Spain that are part of the CIBERobn Network of the Carlos III Health Institute.
“The MED4CHILD questionnaire is a simple, quick and inexpensive tool that will make it possible to evaluate and promote the Mediterranean diet in preschool children, so its use will have important health benefits for this population,” the researchers emphasize.
The study, recently published in the prestigious European Journal of Pediatrics, was carried out on a sample of 858 children from the CORALS and MELIPOP cohorts. The results show that children with higher scores on this questionnaire consumed more foods characteristic of the Mediterranean diet, such as fruits, vegetables, fish and nuts, and had a healthier cardiometabolic profile, including lower waist circumference and lower levels of triglycerides and insulin in the blood.
This new assessment differs from previous tools by including recommended portions adapted to the child population, offering a more accurate assessment of adherence to the Mediterranean diet following the new lifestyles and rhythms of today’s society. This advance has the potential to optimize the monitoring of dietary habits in childhood and contribute to improve public health interventions aimed at preventing diet-related diseases.
The questionnaire is available for use in clinical and research settings, and is expected to serve as a basis for future studies regarding the Mediterranean diet and its relationship to the development or management of nutrition- and metabolism-related diseases in childhood.
The project has been co-led by Alicia Larruy-García, Dr. Pilar De Miguel-Etayo and Professor Luis Moreno, belonging to the GENUD group of the University of Zaragoza and IIS Aragón, together with Dr. Nancy Babio and Professor Jordi Salas-Salvadó of the University Rovira i Virgili and the Institut d’Investigació Sanitària Pere Virgili, all CIBERobn researchers.
Reus, January 22, 2025. The province of Tarragona will take a step forward in carrying out clinical trials of cutting-edge drugs thanks to the construction, this year, of a Clinical Research Unit (UIC). This facility, which will occupy a space of 500 m2, has received a grant of 4,312,240 euros from the Carlos III Health Institute (Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities) and will be located at the Sant Joan University Hospital in Reus. This new UIC has been promoted by the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute (IISPV) together with the Sant Joan University Hospital in Reus, and has had the collaboration of all the health institutions in the territory, the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) and local bodies such as the Reus City Council.
It is in a clinical trial when a medicine begins to be administered to a patient, in order to be marketed with all the guarantees. It goes through 4 processes before it is released on the market: from phase 1, which is the most experimental (in which a patient participating in this trial is treated for the first time with this drug) to phases 2, 3 and 4, which are more advanced and in which aspects such as effectiveness or the suitability of the dose are looked at, to finally end up authorizing its distribution and clinical application.
Currently, clinical trials in phase 1 are only carried out in research centers linked to large hospital structures, located mostly in the Barcelona area. The creation of this UIC will make it possible for this type of study to also be carried out in our territory: “We were already carrying out studies in phases 2, 3 and 4, but, from now on, this UIC will provide us with more infrastructure and resources to carry out clinical trials in phase 1. The expansion of resources (both human and those allocated to space) will help healthcare professionals attract more trials from the other phases; it will allow us to carry out a trial in all its stages, in short, from the most initial to the last, and it will favor the population of our territory to have access to therapies that are only carried out within the framework of a controlled study, bringing them closer to more experimental and innovative drugs”, explains Dr. Joan Vendrell, director of the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute (IISPV). He adds: “This will be especially relevant for patients with cancer, as it will allow therapies that have so far been limited exclusively to controlled trial settings to be brought closer. This initiative represents a step forward in reducing the current gap in access to this type of study, thus improving treatment opportunities for these patients.”
The director of the IISPV, Dr. Joan Vendrell, explains that “with a population of over 800,000 inhabitants, our territory has a potential that exceeds that of other regions with research centres concentrated in large hospital environments. Despite this reality, the current distribution of clinical trials means that access to these trials/studies is still insufficient for our population. The creation of the unit can not only help to reverse this situation, but will also allow research resources to be brought closer to professionals and patients, improving access to innovative therapies.”
For his part, Dr. Anton Benet, manager of Salut Sant Joan Reus-Baix Camp, highlighted “the factor of attraction and retention of talent” that having this facility at the hospital will mean. “The Clinical Research Unit will reinforce our university character, of research and innovation, and will provide value to society and professionals in the generation of knowledge”, he added.
The Universitat Rovira i Virgili very positively assesses the launch of this unit, which “allows us to promote scientific interconnection with the IISPV and promote institutional collaboration with entities in the territory to address a social challenge as important as health, one of the priority research areas of the Strategic Plan for Research and Innovation that we have just approved”, explains Marina Galià, Vice-Rector for Research at the URV. “Having modern and well-equipped spaces, with the appropriate infrastructure and the necessary personnel should allow us to consolidate new priority areas of research and develop research, innovation and transfer projects that have a high social impact on the territory”, he emphasizes.
For his part, Enrique Martín, Councilor for Health and Sports of the Reus City Council, declares: “the city council and the institute have been collaborating for some time to consolidate a leading position of the city in terms of health research, and that this directly or indirectly results in an improvement of services to the citizens. The presence of research infrastructures for the advancement in the treatment of diseases is important for this territory and, even more, I would like to emphasize that it helps us guarantee the equality of access to the population to trials and studies”.
This new UIC is scheduled to be operational by the end of 2026. It will also house a 3 Tesla high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance device to study in detail different parts of the body as well as aspects of the functioning of organs that require special technology, outside the routine healthcare use of these devices.
The UIC will have the complicity of the public health system in primary care (CAPs) by bringing the studies closer to patients through their family doctor. This will be possible thanks to a real-time interconnection between the consultations and the UIC through an IT deployment that links routine healthcare activity with the trials that are active within the territory.
About IISPV
The Pere Virgili Health Research Institute (IISPV) is the centre that manages health and biomedical research in the province of Tarragona and brings together the Joan XXIII University Hospital in Tarragona, the Sant Joan University Hospital in Reus, the University Hospital Pere Mata Institute in Reus and the Verge de la Cinta University Hospital in Tortosa, as well as the Rovira i Virgili University. Since its creation in 2005, the institute has worked to ensure that biomedical research is translated into quality clinical practice for the benefit of patients and an improvement in the health of the population. More than 600 professionals, including researchers, technicians and staff in training, are part of the IISPV, which has 38 research groups divided into four strategic areas: the Metabolic Diseases and Nutrition area, with 16 research groups; the Infection, Immunity and Environment area, with a total of 10 groups; the Oncology area, with 6 more research groups; and the Neurosciences and Mental Health area, which includes 6 research groups.
A diet rich in fruits, vegetables and unsaturated fats shows better sperm parameters than diets based on ultra-processed foods, sugars and saturated fats
Infertility affects 17.5% of couples of reproductive age worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, infertility is a disease of the reproductive system that prevents pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse. Moreover, in the last 40 years, the sperm count in men, especially in industrialized countries, has declined alarmingly.
Now, a research team led by the Human Nutrition Unit of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) that studies the relationship between diet and sperm, has published a study that points out the relationship between dietary patterns and semen. The results of the research have been published in the journal Andrology.
Recent studies pointed out that the consumption of foods such as fish, nuts, fruits and vegetables, as well as nutrients such as omega 3, antioxidants and vitamins, are beneficial for sperm quality. Conversely, eating processed meats, sugary drinks and alcohol is associated with poorer semen quality. However, these relationships are controversial and are not fully scientifically proven.
In this regard, this study has examined dietary patterns as a whole rather than isolated foods or nutrients, with the aim of providing a comprehensive view of how diet may be related to semen quality. The research involved 200 healthy young men of childbearing age who were part of the international Led-Fertyl project, a cross-sectional study designed to assess dietary and lifestyle determinants and their association with key parameters of sperm quality such as sperm concentration, quantity, motility, vitality and morphology, as well as other related parameters.
The analysis focused on different healthy dietary patterns determined through various scales, such as the Mediterranean diet, the plant-based healthy diet index, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) approach, and the EAT-Lancet sustainable diet score. Follow-up of unhealthy dietary patterns, such as the plant-based unhealthy diet index or the Western diet, was also analyzed.
The results showed that a higher adherence to healthy patterns, rich in fruits, vegetables and unsaturated fats, was associated with better quality in different sperm parameters. In contrast, diets based on unhealthy patterns, characterized by high consumption of ultra-processed foods, sugars and saturated fats, were associated with lower semen quality.
“This finding represents an important advance in the understanding of the relationship between diet and semen quality and suggests that maintaining a healthy dietary pattern may be key to a lifestyle that favors reproductive health,” says the research team, which considers that these results ”could have significant implications in the development of new strategies for health promotion and prevention in this area.”
The research has been led by predoctoral researcher Estefanía Dávila-Córdova, under the direction of Nancy Babio, researcher and associate professor in the Human Nutrition Unit of the URV, and Albert Salas-Huetos, researcher and assistant professor at the URV, together with Jordi Salas-Salvadó, director of the Human Nutrition Unit of the university. The entire team is part of the Institut d’Investigació Sanitària Pere Virgili (IISPV) and the Center for Biomedical Research Network on the Pathophysiology of Obesity and Nutrition (CIBERobn).
Bibliographical reference: Estefanía Davila-Cordova, Albert Salas-Huetos, Cristina Valle-Hita, María Fernández de la Puente, María Ángeles Martínez, Antoni Palau-Galindo, Claudia Del Egido-González, José María Manzanares-Errazu, Elena Sánchez-Resino, Jordi Salas-Salvadó, Nancy Babio. Healthy and unhealthy dietary patterns and sperm quality from the Led-Fertyl study. Andrology 2024. https://doi.org/10.1111/andr.13789
The results of this study, led by the Nutrition and Metabolic Health research group of the IISPV and the URV, contribute to improve the prediction of Alzheimer’s disease and to design preventive and therapeutic strategies to mitigate its symptoms
A research team led by the IISPV and the URV has identified molecules in the blood that link insulin resistance to an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. The discovery of these compounds, a type of metabolites -molecules that are the product of the set of chemical reactions that take place in a living organism-, can improve current methods of predicting Alzheimer’s disease. “We have opened a new avenue in research into the prevention and treatment in the early stages of this disease and the relationship between dementias and metabolic diseases such as obesity,” celebrates Mònica Bulló, a researcher in the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology.
Alzheimer’s is an incurable, degenerative and terminal disease that is usually diagnosed in people over 65 years of age. In the early stages, the characteristic symptom is memory loss. As the disease progresses, confusion, irritability, mood swings and loss of sensibility appear. Finally, vital functions decline, ultimately leading to the patient’s death. According to the World Health Organization, Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia – it is diagnosed in more than 60 out of every 100 cases of dementia patients – and is estimated to have an annual economic impact of approximately 1.2 billion euros worldwide.
To carry out the study, researchers from the Nutrition and Metabolic Health (NuMeH) research group worked with data from 400 individuals with mild cognitive impairment, who were followed for four years. During this period, the deterioration of 142 of the individuals evolved into dementia of the Alzheimer’s type. By analyzing more than 600 plasma metabolites, extracted from the individuals’ blood during medical follow-up, they identified a set of 18 metabolites already associated with insulin resistance. “The fact that we have found coincident biomarkers in these two pathologies opens the door to facilitating the early identification of Alzheimer’s disease in insulin-resistant individuals, since metabolic dysfunction appears before cognitive symptoms,” explains Bulló.
Beyond improving Alzheimer’s prediction tools, the methods developed in this research improve the analysis of metabolites in blood samples, which are more accessible than those of cerebrospinal fluid, which require a lumbar puncture, a more invasive process for the patient.
A better understanding of the role that these molecules play in the earlier stages of the disease may also help to design new preventive and therapeutic strategies to slow down the progression of Alzheimer’s disease and improve the quality of life of patients, also in the case of pathologies with common metabolites, such as insulin resistance, typical of patients with type 2 diabetes or obesity.
The research has been led by Professor Mónica Bulló, Director of the NuMeH Research Group and the TecnATox center, and has had the collaboration of researchers from the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute, the Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona, the Pablo de Olavide University of Seville and the ITAKA research group of the URV and also belonging to TecnATox.
Reference: Laia Gutierrez-Tordera, Laura Panisello, Pablo García-Gonzalez, Agustín Ruiz, José Luis Cantero, Melina Rojas-Criollo, Muhammad Mursil, Mercedes Atienza, Nil Novau-Ferré, Javier Mateu-Fabregat, Hamza Mostafa, Domènec Puig, Jaume Folch, Hatem Rashwan, Marta Marquié, Mercè Boada, Christopher Papandreou, Mònica Bulló, Metabolic signature of insulin resistance and risk of Alzheimer’s disease, The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, 2024;, glae283, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glae283
Reus, January 14, 2025. Scientific advances resulting from studies led by the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute (IISPV), the Sant Joan University Hospital of Reus and the Rovira i Virgili University (URV) in the field of ophthalmology have allowed the development of two software for the early diagnosis of diabetic retinopathy. It is a common eye condition in people with type 2 diabetes and is the leading cause of low vision in the population under 60. If not treated in time, it can become irreversible: it can no longer be corrected with glasses and those who suffer from it must stop doing very common activities, such as reading or driving.
This technology is currently being used in a pilot phase at the Sant Joan Hospital in Reus and in different primary care centers in the province of Tarragona. These health centers are where patients go to get tested to detect it and monitor the disease. Through a retinograph or non-mydriatic camera, photos are taken of the fundus of the eye, the affected part. These softwares are integrated into their clinical history, thus allowing a more accurate assessment of the disease and its treatment. They will also allow it to be diagnosed in the most incipient phase, thus preventing it from getting worse and becoming serious, completely conditioning the life of the person who suffers from it.
Innovative technology
The first of these softwares has been named MIRA and is a reading algorithm that records patient data extracted from the photo of the fundus of the eye. It detects whether they have diabetic retinopathy, the degree of evolution (mild, moderate or severe) and, in the case of patients without injury, whether there is a risk of developing it. The MIRA program, unlike other software currently on the market, is capable of detecting diabetic retinopathy in the initial stages, when it is still reversible, and thus prevent it from getting worse. “Diabetic retinopathy in its early stages, if we control it metabolically, that is, by taking care of glucose levels and blood pressure, we can stop it and even reverse it, without having to resort to aggressive intraocular treatments, which is what happens in the advanced stages, in which we have to give intravitreal injections (administration of medications inside the eye to treat eye diseases and protect vision) or have to intervene by performing surgery, etc.”, explains Dr. Pere Romero, head of the Ophthalmology Research Group, which, together with the Department of Computer Engineering and Mathematics of the URV, have developed this technology.
The second algorithm is known as RETIPROGRAM and is a prediction algorithm: it is set with 9 indicators (age, sex, weight, height, blood pressure, time of evolution of diabetes, its metabolic control, hemoglobin levels and kidney condition) to assess the state of the patient’s disease, and, consequently, to determine how often they should go to their health center to have the control test. “This last software will therefore help us to rationalize this type of test: we will do them in a personalized way, when it is assessed that it is necessary to do them, and not when the health system establishes it by default”. This algorithm is the first in Spain that has been developed by studying a population of diabetic patients in the territory (more than 120,000, controlled over 10 years), with which the prediction of the date to do the control is very accurate.
This research has received funding from the Institut de Salut Carlos III (references PI21/00064, PI18/00169, PI15/001150 and PI12/01535) and has been co-financed by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Health and the European Union (references 220718 and 230123), giving rise to the creation of the spin-off RetinaReadRisk S.L. (https://retinareadrisk.eu/), in February 2023.
Air pollution, noise, light and hazardous waste not only affect the environment, but can also have a great impact on our health. To address this challenge, the TecnATox research group (Center for Environmental, Food and Toxicological Technology) of the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute (IISPV) and Rovira i Virgili University (URV) is participating in a new European project, ENVESOME (“The Environmental Exposome and Health”), which aims to study how the combination of these factors can contribute to the development of non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disorders, respiratory difficulties, sleep disturbances and mental health problems.
This project has been awarded under the HORIZON-HLTH-2024-ENVHLTH-02-06 call and has a duration of four years. It is led by the National Hellenic Research Foundation of Greece and involves the participation of 14 European Union institutions. The main objective of the project is to strengthen the knowledge available to policy makers and to provide tools that help to better understand the causal mechanisms and associations between pollution and diseases throughout the different stages of life.
ENVESOME combines science, technology and data to investigate how pollution affects human health. Researchers collect air quality data, analyze the human body’s biological responses, and use artificial intelligence to make connections between exposure to pollutants and disease. This information enables the development of strategies to reduce the risks associated with pollution and improve public health.
From this research, new tools will be designed and tested in several areas to evaluate their effectiveness. These tools include a mobile application to help people learn about their exposure to pollution and learn how to protect themselves, a support system for policy makers to improve environmental decision making, and a chatbot aimed at healthcare professionals to guide them on the effects of pollution on patients.
Project impact and objectives
Beyond research, ENVESOME aims to apply its findings to improve public policies and update allowable pollution limits. It also seeks to promote healthy habits that help reduce the negative effects of pollution on health.
This collaborative effort demonstrates that science and joint work between European institutions can make a significant difference in protecting public health. With ENVESOME, it is expected to offer effective solutions to address one of the most important challenges of our time: pollution and its effects on human health
The prominent role of the TecnATox group of IISPV and URV
TecnATox plays a key role within the ENVESOME project, led by principal investigator Dr. Vikas Kumar. Vikas Kumar, who leads TecnATox’s strategic contributions in various areas of research and development: Model development; making a lead in computational toxicology and bioinformatics to create predictive models, artificial intelligence and big data volumes; driving innovation in text mining, data harmonization and dynamic knowledge graphs, exposure assessment; improving frameworks and tools for contaminant exposure assessment and policy support; providing data-driven tools, such as decision support systems (DSS) and chatbots, for policy makers.
This comprehensive involvement highlights TecnATox’s expertise in integrating biological, computational and analytical methods to address emerging challenges in environmental health.
A European-wide investigation in which the Pere Virgili Health Research Institute (IISPV) participates studies which factors influence the emotional and physical health of adolescents, so that they themselves can adopt them in their day-to-day lives or strengthen them, in the event that they already have them incorporated, and so that they can improve their overall well-being. Specifically, researchers from the NeuroEpia Research Group (Clinical and Epidemiological Neuroscience) are participating, which, through first an observational study (monitoring a population of adolescents and their habits) and a subsequent intervention with these young people, will corroborate which aspects have a greater influence on their health.
In the last phase of the study, these aspects of healthy living will be incorporated into a mobile application designed so that adolescents can install it on their device and receive advice and recommendations on how to improve their emotional and physical health.
The project, called YEAH! (Youth hEAlth from a Holistic perspective), is led at the IISPV by principal investigator Jordi Julvez, head of the NeuroEpia Research group.
It is coordinated by the Universite Grenoble Alpes and will last 5 years. It is funded by the European Union.