Rosanne Beijers received NRS Travel Grant
Short report ESPEN congress
I am a last year PhD student at the Department of Respiratory Medicine of the Maastricht University and my PhD project focusses on the cardiometabolic risk profile of patients with COPD and potential exercise and nutritional interventions to modulate this risk.
From September 9-12th, I attended the 39th European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN) congress in The Hague, The Netherlands. During this congress experts in the field of nutrition and metabolism from all over the world presented and discussed their recent findings. I attended several scientific sessions related to metabolic consequences and nutrition in chronic diseases which were very interesting in relation to my own research. For example, during the session metabolic pathways and muscle maintenance, Marielle Engelen discussed the efficacy of interventions targeting muscle in disease and showed that especially the essential amino acid leucine would be useful to improve muscle metabolism in elderly and in patients with COPD. In addition, Ellen Blaak discussed the metabolic consequences of ectopic fat accumulation that can also play an important role in the increased cardiometabolic risk profile of patients with COPD and Pirjo Nuutila discussed novel advances in imaging of fat tissue content and metabolism. Besides this, Peter Collins, an expert in the field of nutrition in COPD, discussed nutritional interventions for pulmonary cachexia.
In addition to the scientific presentations, I presented data of the randomized placebo controlled crossover study investigating the effect of dietary nitrate on the mechanical efficiency and the cardiometabolic risk profile of patients with COPD during a poster session. This poster presentation gave me the opportunity to discuss the results of this study with experts in the field of nutrition.
Overall, the ESPEN congress was very useful to expand my scientific knowledge and network in the field of nutrition and metabolism. I would like to thank the NRS for giving me the opportunity to attend this congress.
Rosanne Beijers
Department of Respiratory Medicine
NUTRIM School of Nutrition and Translational Research in Metabolism
Maastricht University Medical Centre+
