IDIBGI receives a grant from Fundación Merck Salud to investigate the relationship between obesity and cognitive dysfunction in children
The study “Cognitive function and obesity in prepubertal children: the effect of maternal obesity, prenatal and postnatal growth and environmental factors”, promoted by the Institute for Biomedical Research of Girona (IDIBGI), received on Thursday June 27th one of the seven Merck 2019 grants, in the area of Cardiometabolic Risk. The ceremony of delivery, which took place at the Teatro Real in Madrid, was attended by representatives of the university sector, health authorities and the field of biomedical research, among others.
The IDIBGI project has received funding of 30,000 euros from the Merck Salud Foundation and is expected to last for 3 years. Several IDIBGI groups are part of it, such as Obesity and Cardiovascular Risk in Pediatrics, from Dr. López-Bermejo, Maternal-Fetal Metabolic Research, headed by Dr. Judit Bassols, and the Research on Aging, Disability and Health, by Dr. Josep Garre-Olmo.
This study investigates why there are children with obesity who suffer from cognitive disorders, such as lack of memory, attention deficit and learning difficulty, and whether this alteration is related to the development of the child. The research involves around 300 school-aged children from the Girona region with a mean age of 5 years.
Dr. Abel López-Bermejo, who is also a pediatrician specialized in childhood endocrinology at Doctor Josep Trueta University Hospital of Girona, wanted to thank the Merck Foundation “for its involvement in the biomedical research that is taking place in Spain”. He also highlighted the role of the many IDIBGI researchers that are part of the project and, above all, the disinterested collaboration of the parents and the children involved.
In the 29th edition of the Merck Research Grant, a total of 253 national clinical proposals were presented, of which 8 were selected in different areas. The Merck Salud Foundation was created in 1991 under the name of Fundación Salud 2000 and is a private, non-profit institution financed by Merck, a leading science and technology company specialized in Healthcare, Life Science and Performance Materials. Its objective is to promote biomedical research in all disciplines that contribute to the promotion of health and the development of bioethics and health law.
