CREAL. Centre for research in environmental epidemiology

This month the TAPAS project has completed the process of data collection and now begins the process of evaluating them, in order to know how active transport can improve health. The hypothesis is that cycling for less contaminated sites, as near the sea, is more beneficial than to do it near a busy street with much traffic, but in any way is still more beneficial to health than doing no exercise.

Yesterday GENOMet network held its first meeting in Barcelona. It was a very successful event, which counted with the attendance of 60 researchers from 30 Spain research centres and universities. The attendees came not only from bioinformatics centres but also from statistical and research centres that generate genomic data so they can get some benefit from the tools developed in this environmental network.

CREAL invites 750 families, who participate in the INMA project, and 60 schools from Sabadell to attend two conferences on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and other behavioral problems in children that will be held next 13th December.

The Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL) will hold on Friday November 25th its Annual Retreat. The meeting will be held at the Casa de la Convalescència-UAB (Sant Antoni Maria Claret 171 street) and will involve all CREAL staff.

Temperatures tend to increase year after year. A CREAL group of researchers, led by Dr. Xavi Basagaña, has quantified how many people died in Catalonia due to heat waves (three consecutive days with temperatures above 30 degrees) or occasional peaks of temperature increases. Deaths related to these phenomena are 333.

There is growing evidence that despite the absence of marked deficiencies, diet during pregnancy has important implications for maternal and child health in industrialized countries. For this reason CREAL researchers, Drs. Michelle Mendez and Manolis Kogevinas, provide an evaluation on the feasibility of harmonizing dietary intake data from existing studies, which can be applied in future post hoc standardization efforts. The data yielded in this analysis will also provide useful information for the development of food and nutrition policies for pregnant women in Europe, including the identification of population subgroups in which dietary inadequacies during pregnancy may be widespread.

Although more extreme heat conditions have been predicted for the future, there is little information available on the potential impact of such conditions on pregnancy length. Dadvand et al. CREAL researchers investigated the impact of maternal short-term exposure to extreme ambient heat on the length of pregnancy based on a cohort of 7,585 births that occurred during 2001–2005 in Barcelona, Spain.

The results of SAPALDIA study strengthen the evidence on adverse impact of transportation noise on blood pressure and underline the need to investigate potentially vulnerable populations

The largest study of cancer research, MCC-Spain, is completing its first phase focused on data collection. So far 3110 has been captured and 5,323 control cases of cancer (colorectal cancer 1964, 1494 of breast cancer, prostate cancer 994, 440, 431 stomach cancer and chronic lymphocytic leukemia). Until the final closure by year-end is intended to achieve the 7,000 cancer cases and nearly 3,000 controls.

On Saturday October 1st the Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL) participated in visits during the Open Day at the Biomedical Research Park of Barcelona (PRBB). The visits through the building, which were a success in being exhausted in a few hours, had some stops or "stations" in various units and research centres. One of them at CREAL.