Examinando por Autor "Giacometto, Marcela"

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    Chocolate, Air Pollution and Children's Neuroprotection: What Cognition Tools should be at Hand to Evaluate Interventions?
    (FRONTIERS MEDIA SA, 2016-08) Calderón-Garcidueñas, Lilian; San Juan Chávez, Vanessa; Vacaseydel-Aceves, Nora B.; Calderón-Sánchez, Raymundo; Macías-Escobedo, Edgar; Frías, Carmen; Giacometto, Marcela; Velasquez, Luis; Félix-Villarreal, Renata; Martin, Jessie D.; Draheim, Christopher; Engle, Randall W.
    Millions of children across the world are exposed to multiple sources of indoor and outdoor air pollutants, including high concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone (O-3). The established link between exposure to PM2.5, brain structural, volumetric and metabolic changes, severe cognitive deficits (1.5-2 SD from average IQ) in APOE 4 heterozygous females with >75 - <94% BMI percentiles, and the presence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) hallmarks in urban children and young adults necessitates exploration of ways to protect these individuals from the deleterious neural effects of pollution exposure. Emerging research suggests that cocoa interventions may be a viable option for neuroprotection, with evidence suggesting that early cocoa interventions could limit the risk of cognitive and developmental concerns including: endothelial dysfunction, cerebral hypoperfusion, neuroinflammation, and metabolic detrimental brain effects. Currently, however, it is not clear how early we should implement consumption of cocoa to optimize its neuroprotective effects. Moreover, we have yet to identify suitable instruments for evaluating cognitive responses to these interventions in clinically healthy children, teens, and young adults. An approach to guide the selection of cognitive tools should take into account neuropsychological markers of cognitive declines in patients with Alzheimer's neuropathology, the distinct patterns of memory impairment between early and late onset AD, and the key literature associating white matter integrity and poor memory binding performance in cases of asymptomatic familial AD. We highlight potential systemic and neural benefits of cocoa consumption. We also highlight Working Memory Capacity (WMC) and attention control tasks as opened avenues for exploration in the air pollution scenario. Exposures to air pollutants during brain development have serious brain consequences in the short and long term and reliable cognition tools should be at hand to evaluate interventions.
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    Comportamiento hacia los alimentos y su asociación con el estado nutricional y la actividad física en una población general chilena
    (ARAN Ediciones S.A., 2018-11) Rojas-Gómez, Diana Marcela; Giacometto, Marcela; Olmos González, Claudio; Arias, Vanessa; Muñoz-Carvajal, Yasna; Pérez-Leighton, Claudio; Núñez-Palma, Constanza; Rojas, Raúl
    obesity has become a chronic disease whose etiology can be based on an imbalance between the contribution and energy expenditure of the individual, where the behavior against food consumption and physical activity play an important role as determinants in this energy balance. Methods: in the present study, behavior in relation to food consumption and physical activity and its association with nutritional status in a general Chilean population was analyzed. It was a cross-sectional study in 629 people, belonging to the university community of the Andres Bello University. The subjects answered online surveys about sociodemographic, anthropometric, attitude to food consumption (TFEQ) and physical activity (GPAQ). Results: the factorial structure of the TFEQ questionnaire in Spanish showed two factors: the “cognitive restriction” factor and the “disinhibition versus food” factor. With regard to nutritional status, it was found that 39.4% of the population had malnutrition due to excess. In relation to physical activity, half of the subjects performed less than 36 minutes of exercise per day. Individuals with uninhibited behavior towards food presented less practice of total physical activity. Additionally, subjects with low BMI and with greater age were more likely to present a restrictive behavior towards food. Conclusion: in the TFEQ questionnaire, two factors were found that explain the variation of behavior in relation to food consumption, which were associated with BMI and with physical activity in the study population. © 2018 SENPE.