Francisco B Ortega

• Department of Physical Education and Sport
  Faculty of Sport Sciences
  University of Granada , Spain
  Crta Alfacar s/n. 18071. Granada, Spain.

Founder and currently co-director of the PROFITH research Group and Co-Head of the Research Unit of Physical Activity and Health Promotion in the Research Institute of Sport and Health (iMUDS).

Francisco B. Ortega (Fran) graduated from the Faculty of Sport Sciences at the University of Granada, Spain (1998-2002). He did 2 separate Doctoral Theses in Exercise Physiology at the University of Granada and in Medical Sciences at the Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden). He was 4 years as a postdoc researcher in Sweden and USA (2008-2012). In 2012, Fran was granted with the prestigious Ramón y Cajal Research Fellowship to come back to the Faculty of Sport Sciences at the University of Granada, where he is currently a Professor. Between 2012 and 2024, he has been affiliated to Karolinska Institute, Sweden, and has also been a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland.

His main research interests are:

• 1) Assessment of physical fitness.
• 2) Objective assessment of physical activity using accelerometry.
• 3) Effects of exercise on physical and mental health outcomes, as well as on cognition and brain.
• 4) Exercise and cardiovascular health.
• 5) Wearables and mobile technology applied to sport sciences.

Top-5 publications

1. Migueles, JH, Cadenas-Sanchez C, Lubans DR,…, Ortega FB (16/16). Effects of an Exercise Program on Cardiometabolic and Mental Health in Children With Overweight or Obesity: A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA network open 6, e2324839 (2023).https://doi.org/10.1001%2Fjamanetworkopen.2023.24839

Contribution: In this study, we demonstrated that an exercise intervention can reduce total adiposity measured by gold-standard methods in up to 80% of children with overweight/obesity, as well as impact positively, visceral adiposity, LDL cholesterol and cardiorespiratory fitness.

2. Ortega FB, Mora-Gonzalez J, Cadenas-Sanchez C, Esteban-Cornejo I, Migueles JH, Solis-Urra P, Verdejo-Roman J, Rodriguez-Ayllon M, Molina-Garcia P, Ruiz JR, Martinez-Vizcaino V, Hillman CH, Erickson KI, Kramer AF, Labayen I, Catena A (1/16). Effects of exercise on brain health outcomes in children with overweight/obesity: the ActiveBrains randomized controlled trial. JAMA Network Open 2022 Aug 1;5(8):e2227893.https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.27893

Contribution: This is probably my biggest contribution in the field of exercise and brain health. This paper reports the ActiveBrain trial effects on primary outcomes and showed for first time strong evidence suggesting that intelligence can be effectively improved by exercise during growth, among other important findings. This study lays ground for school policy changes in physical education.

3. Henriksson H, Henriksson P, Tynelius P, Ekstedt M, Berglind D, Labayen I, Ruiz, JR, Lavie CJ, Ortega FB (9/9). Cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular strength, and obesity in adolescence and later chronic disability due to cardiovascular disease: a cohort study of 1 million men. Eur Heart J 2020; 41(15):1503-1510.https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehz774

Contribution: We studied 1 million participants over 30 years and demonstrated the relevance of fitness components and obesity as risk factors for chronic diseases (including cardiovascular and mental), leading to disability.

4. Ortega FB, Lee DC, Katzmarzyk PT, Ruiz JR, Sui X, Church TS & Blair SN (1/7). The intriguing metabolically healthy but obese phenotype: cardiovascular prognosis and role of fitness. Eur Heart J, 2013;34:389-97.https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehs174

Contribution: In this study we demonstrated that cardiorespiratory fitness plays an important role in the cardiovascular prognosis in metabolically healthy obese individuals, which had important clinical implications. WOS ranked it a Highly Cited Paper (99^th centile). This paper received >300 press notes (including BBC and CNN).

5. Ortega FB, Silventoinen K, Tynelius P, Rasmussen F (1/4). Muscular strength in male adolescents and premature death: a cohort study of one million participants. BMJ. 2012 Nov 20; 345: e7279.https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e7279

Contribution: In this study we linked for the first time muscular fitness in adolescence with future cardiovascular and psychiatric mortality/morbidity. This and some of our other papers contributed to created fitness national-level monitoring systems after fitness proved to be highly health informative. WOS ranked it Highly Cited Paper (99^th centile). This paper was acknowledged as Most Popular BMJ’s paper, with 51,908 views in 2 months.