Ramon y Cajal Research Fellow
Email: estherug@ugr.es
Ramon y Cajal Research Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sports Sciences of the University of Granada, since 2017 she is part of the PROFITH research Group and the Research Unit of Physical Activity and Health Promotion in the Research Institute of Sport and Health (iMUDS)
Esther Ubago Guisado studied a Degree in Sports Sciences at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (2012-2017), and at the same institution she completed an International Doctorate in Socio-Health Research and Physical Activity (2013-2017), obtaining the Extraordinary PhD Award in the area of Health Sciences. She has research experience abroad with a 12-month stay at the prestigious University of Exeter (United Kingdom) within the Children’s Health and Exercise Research Center (CHERC) Research Group, whose Faculty of Health and Sports Sciences is considered the number 1 in the United Kingdom and whose University is among the 100 best in the world. She was granted with several highly prestigious research contracts such as a María Zambrano contract and, currently, a Ramon y Cajal Research Assistant Professor contract, both at the Faculty of Sports Sciences of the University of Granada.
– Physical activity and body composition.
– Exercise and bone health.
– Exercise and cancer.
– Assessment of physiological fragility.
Contribution: It is an original manuscript from the PRO-BONE study, funded by the European Commission (FP7) and Marie Sklodowska Curie, for which I was working during a year during my research stay in the United Kingdom. The purpose of this longitudinal study was to determine the 1-year longitudinal bone acquisition among 116 adolescent males (aged 12 to 14 years at baseline) involved in osteogenic (football) and non-osteogenic (swimming and cycling) sports and to compare with active controls. The findings of this paper suggest that osteogenic sport (in this case, football) is beneficial for bone acquisition and that participation in non-osteogenic sports (in this case, swimming and cycling) is not enough to induce positive bone adaptations.
Contribution: It is an original manuscript from the PRO-BONE study, funded by the European Commission (FP7) and Marie Sklodowska Curie, for which I was working during a year during my research stay in the United Kingdom. In this study with 104 adolescents (12-14 years old), we showed differences in bone health according to the impact of sport and throughout adolescence taking into account children´s maturation. The findings were very striking and underline the necessity of high impact activities within the physical education curriculum to maximise bone adaptations during growth.
Contribution: It is a quality leap in my methodology used so far in other reviews, since we carried out a Network Meta-analysis. This word includes 85 RCTs involving nearly 7,000 people with cancer with the aim of synthesize the evidence from intervention studies to assess the effect of different types of exercise on health-related quality of life during and after cancer treatment. Social functioning, role emotional, or mental health are dimensions habitually evaluated in quality of life questionnaires. Exercise programs that combine aerobic and resistance training may be recommended to improve health-related quality of life during and after cancer treatment. Therefore, according to international consensus and guidelines, exercise should be recommended to improve health-related quality of life in cancer patients.
Contribution: This work is part of a randomized controlled trial called Project iBoneFIT (Improving Bone Health in Pediatric Cancer Survivors), and highlighted the importance of promoting physical fitness in the pediatric oncology population to improve their psychological health. Therefore, it is necessary to implement well-designed physical exercise programs specifically focused on improving psychological health in children and adolescents diagnosed with cancer.
Contribution: This study is part of a randomized controlled trial called Project iBoneFIT (Improving Bone Health in Pediatric Cancer Survivors), and identified muscle strength deficits and associations of these deficits with lower bone mineral density in a sample of young pediatric cancer survivors. These findings show the importance of incorporating physical exercise plans in cancer survivors.
