Scientific Activity

 

 

Since the research group was created, we are continuously developing a wide research task specially focused on diseases of a higher morbidity and incidence in internal medicine (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes mellitus, arterial hypertension, cardiovascular risk factors, hepatic insufficiency, …).

The main objective was the determination techniques of the micronutrients before mentioned (atomic absorption spectrometry technique), and the determination of values in the healthy general population, in order to have a reference point to be compared to patients with several conditions; that is, to know the concentrations in healthy subjects and patients. Taking the healthy subjects as general population (age, gender, environment, socio-economic status,…) we carried out a study to determine the body concentrations of zinc in a large population sample of the province and the city of Granada.  The interesting results found in the study of zinc in blood and urine, led us to continue the research in the conditions previously mentioned, resulting in the ad-hoc publications included in this document.

A more detailed study of zinc the human body revealed that reliable determinations of zinc in blood and urine were not significant enough to know their body concentrations. Therefore, we designed a zinc overload test and later determinations in 24 h blood and urine, similarly to the glucose tolerance test carried out for the diagnosis of diabetes.  The results of this hypothesis is supported by journal articles, congress communications,  PhD thesis, MD thesis, …

We also studied magnesium values in healthy subjects and patients. The findings resulted from these two research lines showed that chronic diseases with a possible deficient component presented decreased values of these elements (hypozincemia and hypomagnesemia). The decrease in these elements could be due to three different causes: a diet poor in these elements because of the lack of ingestion of meat, entrails, dry fruits, fish, …),absorption deficiency of these elements that could be explained by some chronic malabsorptive diseases, or due to an excessive catabolism of these elements. In the clinical practice of internal medicine, where subsidiary patients of health assistance are usually aged patients with several associated diseases, it is difficult to establish whether the cause of micronutrients deficiency is one of the three circumstances previously mentioned or the combination of all of them.

After knowing the concentrations and functioning of these elements using overload tests, we could think that trace elements could only be excreted by natural emunctories (blood and urine). However, some medical literature has demonstrated the presence of these elements in skin appendages (skin, nails, and hair). Therefore, we proposed a new stage in our research study aimed to determine accurately zinc concentrations in skin appendages, in healthy subjects and patients with chronic conditions. This research resulted in several PhD thesis, published articles in national, international congresses, and medical journals articles.

The third stage of our research study was aimed to find the concentrations of these trace elements in arterial hypertension, the most common disease in the Occidental world, and the associated cardiovascular risk factors.

From a therapeutic point of view, we observed that hypertensive patients long-term treated specially with diuretics presented hypozincemia and hypomagnesemia; we also observed that the administration of zinc and magnesium as coadjuvant treatment to the conventional therapy normalized the concentrations of these micronutrients in blood and urine as well as improved the control of arterial blood pressure and the lipid and glycemic parameters.  The good results of this treatment led us to use in some cases this coadjuvant treatment with minimal or no side-effects in the patients treated in our hospital.

As previously mentioned, due to the prevalence of morbidity and mortality  of this disease, we put our efforts into stopping as much as possible this epidemy of the 21th century.

In Spain, there are more than ten millions hypertensive patients (values <130/80mmHg); moreover, hypertension has associated risk factors such as obesity, diabetes mellitus, dyslipemia, hyperuricemia, tobacco abuse, …), increasing the harmful effects on these patients, which encouraged us to focuse our research activity on this field, and the study of these trace elements as the first reason for creating this research group. We enclose to this document the PhD theses, MD theses, communications to congresses, journals articles, monographs, and books that support this large research.