The academic committee of the high school Oficial de Médicos de Gipuzkoa awards the work of Nerea Martín Calvo, specialist in Pediatrics at the department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health of the School of Medicine of the University of Navarra, with the first award for the Best Scientific article published in a medical journal in 2014.

The research, entitled"Consumption of sugar-sweetened carbonated beverages and obesity in childhood/adolescence: a case-control study", analyzes the association between consumption of sugar-sweetened carbonated beverages and obesity in childhood and adolescence. The study included 174 cases (obese children/adolescents) and 174 controls (non-obese), that is, a total of 348 children/adolescents from Navarra.

According to the expert, "we found that the consumption of carbonated-sweetened beverages (the most common soft drinks) was significantly associated with obesity in the children in our study". Furthermore, "we found that obesity was 3.46 times more frequent among children who consumed more than four servings of this subject beverage per week, i.e., this weekly consumption carries a relative increase in the risk of obesity of 246%".

In addition, "it was observed that each extra daily serving of this subject beverage multiplied the risk of obesity by 1.69 times in the children and adolescents in our study," the expert notes. At final, "this represents a relative increase in the risk of obesity of 69% for each extra daily serving of this subject beverage".

From agreement with the beverage industry, soft drink consumption has increased in parallel with the obesity epidemic. Among the different types of soft drinks, carbonated soft drinks are the most widely consumed, and it should be noted that, although the production of light beverages (with no added sugars) has increased, it represents only 25% of total production. 

project SENDO

Nerea Martín Calvo holds a scholarship Río Hortega (2013-2015) and works as a professor teaching assistant Doctor in the department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health of the University of Navarra. Currently, she is in Boston doing a postdoctoral stay at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

In January 2015 she launched, as principal investigator, the project SENDO (Seguimiento de Escolares Navarros Para un development Óptimo), a pilot initiative whose goal is to know the dietary habits and lifestyles of Navarrese children and adolescents in order to study possible associations with different pathologies in childhood and adolescence.

The first phase of the project aims to know the Degree adherence of Navarrese children to the patron saint of per diem expenses Mediterranean and to study its possible protective effect against obesity and metabolic syndrome. The research team aims to create a children's cohort of reference letter in Spain in 2016.