Day 1 :
Keynote Forum
Marcos Ascensión
Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Spain
Keynote: The impact of overweight and obesity on adolescence: consequences on metabolic biomarkers
Time : 09:00-09:25
Biography:
Prof. Marcos got her PhD at the School of Pharmacy at the Complutense University in Madrid, Spain (UCM) in 1982 and Master in Clinical Analysis by UCM in 1986 and got a grant at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and she was the Head of the Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology at the Mixed Center CSIC-UCM (1998-2002). She is the leader of the Immunonutrition Research Group at the Department of Metabolism and Nutrition at CSIC since 1987. Prof. Marcos achieved the highest category at CSIC as a Research Professor in 2006 and her scientific consolidation has been recognized for 5 six-year terms since 1985. She is a pioneer in the field of Immunonutrition in Spain, Founder and President of the International Forum of Immunonutrition for Education and Research (i-FINER) since 2007. In 2014 the i-FINER group has developed the International Society for Immunonutrition (ISIN), Dr. Marcos being also the President
Abstract:
important risk to suffer from inflammation related pathologies, such as type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, atherosclerosis, hypertension, and very frequently infections and allergies. In addition, there are several confounder factors, such as age, gender, eating behaviour, physical activity, sedentariness and sleep that are essential to take into account in order to implement successful treatments and achieve the best results. The increase in childhood obesity has been reported to lead to adult associated comorbidities that give rise to elevated healthcare costs. Therefore, treating obesity in young people is critical to prevent adult obesity-related complications. However, as adolescence is characterized by important changes in body size and composition, it is important to highlight that weight management treatments for obese adolescents should aim to ensure adequate growth and development, by reducing excessive fat mass accumulation, avoiding loss of lean body mass, improving well-being and self-esteem and preventing cyclical weight regain. During treatments a follow-up of biomarkers evaluation is essential to assess changes in the metabolism. Among them, very recently during the last decade, the gut microbiota composition has been shown up as a potential partaker in the development of obesity and its association with the subsequent insulin resistance. In summary, obesity prevention in early ages and the evaluation of biomarkers acquire a great interest to promote life quality through preventing inflammatory mechanisms along life.
Keynote Forum
Ali H. Mokdad
University of Washington, USA
Keynote: Global Burden of Disease, injuries, and risk factors in 188 countries, 1990-2013
Time : 09:25-09:50
Biography:
Ali Mokdad, PhD, is Director of Middle Eastern Initiatives and Professor of Global Health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. He started his career at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1990. He has published more than 300 articles and numerous reports and received several awards, including the Global Health Achievement Award for his work in Banda Aceh after the tsunami, the Department of Health and Human Services Honor Award for his work on flu monitoring, and the Shepard Award for outstanding scientific contribution to public health
Abstract:
The Global Burden of Disease 2013 (GBD) is a systematic, scientific effort to quantify the comparative magnitude of health loss from all major diseases, injuries, and risk factors by age, sex, and population and over time for 188 countries from 1990 to present. It covers 306 diseases and injuries, 2,337 sequelae, and 76 risk factors. GBD provides Years of life lost due to premature mortality (YLLs), Years lived with disability (YLDs), and Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Global life expectancy for both sexes increased from 65.3 years in 1990, to 71.5 years in 2013, while the number of deaths increased from 47.5 million to 54.9 million over the same interval. For women aged 25–39 years and older than 75 years and for men aged 20–49 years and 65 years and older. YLDs for both sexes increased from 537.6 million in 1990 to 764.8 million in 2013, while the age-standardized rate decreased from 114.87 to 110.31 per 1,000 people between 1990 and 2013. The aggregation of the 14 specific components of diet accounts for nearly one tenth of global DALYs in 2013. After diet, high systolic blood pressure is the next most important global risk factor accounting for 8.5% of all DALYs up from 5.6% in 1990. It is the underlying causes of diseases and injuries that ought to guide prevention efforts, and knowing their comparative magnitude, and trends, in causing health loss is arguably among the most important information required by countries to prioritize health programs and policies
Keynote Forum
Homayoon Farzadegan
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA
Keynote: Critical role of large scale academic repositories in epidemiology and public health
Time : 09:50-10:15
Biography:
Homayoon Farzadegan, PhD, professor of Epidemiology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. A native of Iran, he first came to the United States in 1969 to complete his graduate studies, then taught at Tehran University School of Medicine. He immigrated to the United States in 1980, following the Iranian revolution in 1979, and became a U.S. citizen 18 years ago. His research interests include infectious diseases, viral diseases transmitted by blood and other body fluids, epidemiology and natural history studies, and genetic epidemiology. Farzadegan abilities to engage students—sometimes under less-than-ideal conditions earned him the Golden Apple, as the teaching award is known at the School, in the best small class category. In 2003, 2007, 2008, 2009 Golden Apple Award for excellence in teaching.
Abstract:
Sequentially obtained biological samples stored at optimal frozen condition provide a powerful tool in epidemiological studies to address the role of biomarkers in epidemiology and public health. Cryogenically maintained sequentially collected specimens from participants of cohort studies or epigenetic studies are successfully used in non-concurrent prospective studies to determine and evaluate predictive values of potential biomarkers. At Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, 2.5 million blood samples were collected and stored at specific time intervals to address natural history of infectious diseases, potential gene-environment correlations in disease progression. The Johns Hopkins Biological Repository (JHBR) included more than 30 cohort studies of infectious disease or epigenetics of diseases on unknown etiology. Important biomarkers such as HIV-1 viral load as predictor of progression to AIDS or effectiveness of antiretroviral treatment were discovered. Using frozen specimen collected in multicenter cohort studies (MACS) or the study of HIV among IDU’s collected since 1984-1988 were utilized to address the side-effects of HIV treatment as well as chronic disease among HIV survivors. COPD gene studies including 10,000 participants and Autism genetic studies including hundreds of parents and Autistic children utilized frozen DNA to study the genetic association with these diseases. Examples of data from these studies will be presented describing technical, structural the functional aspects of cryogenic facilities, frozen specimen and study designs in epidemiological studies.
Keynote Forum
Sophia Salenius
Reg Point S.L, Spain
Keynote: Daily Medical Support (DMS)
Time : 10:35-11:00
Biography:
Sophia Salenius is Managing Director of RegPoint Ltd, a health services company supplying wireless technology to the global healthcare community. She is a leading expert in the international IT healthcare field and a sought after guest speaker at professional conferences around the world. Ms. Salenius is well known as the inventor behind the unique mHealth solution for public health threat detection and management called RegPoint. Her invention is also used in a wireless early warning and advice solution for natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes, as well as to combat public health threats including chronic diseases and epidemics such as SARS and the Avian A flu.
Abstract:
Two significant aspects of the management of a epidemics, pandemics and chronic diseases are ensuring that patients comply with their prescribed treatment and close monitoring of symptoms of the public. Providing medical practitioners, epidemiologists and disease controlers and patients with a mechanism that encourages treatment compliance and provides the means to monitor symptoms in real or near-real time would not only facilitate better management of diseases, but would also reduce the costs related to the diseases and reduce the spread of them. Such a mechanism is made available through the Daily Medical Support (DMS) standard for communication that makes use of the RegPoint software module, a wireless disease management system operating via mobile telephony. The concept, developed by the health services company RegPoint Ltd (www.RegPoint.eu), is specially designed to monitor all kind of diseases.
Keynote Forum
Cecaro Massimo
Italian Medical Press, Italy
Keynote: Massi-care: innovative method to communicate emerging diseases in an easy way
Time : 11:00-11:25
Biography:
Dr Massimo Cecaro achieved a Master Degree in Veterinary Medicine and Specialization in the field of Public Health and Preventive Medicine. He worked as radio speaker, TV presenter and reporter for a wide range of artistic and scientific events. At the age of 24 he obtained a qualification to practice as a Journalist and in 2007 he was admitted to the National Association of Medical Press (ASMI), where he currently holds the position of National Councilor. He is Resident Member of MJA Medical Journalists’ Association (London). He has been invited as Keynote speaker, mentor, chairman, Honourable Guest at International events in the field of Public Health and Safety in Canada, USA, Europe and Asia. He is also director in Italy of a prestigious Educational Centre for work safety and public health. He is actively involved in International projects to improve the role of mass-media in medical sciences, and awarded in Philadelphia, Valencia and Las Vegas with International special recognitions. He is serving as an editorial member of several reputed journals, and Editor-in-Chief in the “Occupational Medicine & Health Affairs” and in “Journal of Mass Communication & Journalism”. He is Founding Editor in Chief of “Journal of Occupational Health & Research”. He is OCM of several International Conferences in US and in Europe.
Abstract:
An important role in preventing the infectious diseases comes from competent journalist that should have the right knowledge of medical sciences. The “One Medicine Approach” is the result of the co-participation between medical doctors (MD and DVM) and the scientific community (biologist, and expert in this field) with the support of journalists that should have a proven experience in the field of the infectious diseases, and more in general, on scientific subjects. We should create a new model to deliver information that should give clear news in a simple way and with correct methodology aiming to express “final information” without any alarmism. In fact on newspapers we sometime read about scenario that could spread to media the sense of panic or that are not precisely “politically correct” with an enormous, catastrophic, impact on our society; we should instead deliver the information that it is actually important to give avoiding “just the dissemination of results to the public’. The new model MASSI-Care (Model of Acquire Scientific Specific Information on Care) would be to be a sort of method that could deliver correct information - epurated by “non-scientific surrounding” - in a proper, rigorous, way. An ideal checklist should incorporate the basic principles of medical science reporting with the journalist’s code of ethics. (Cecaro 2012)