Miguel Martínez-González

Prof. Miguel A. Martínez-González is a medical epidemiologist, Professor of Public Health at the University of Navarra, Adjunct Professor of Nutrition at Harvard TH School of Public Health (Dpt. of Nutrition) since 2016, and group leader at CIBEROBN, with >30 years of experience in epidemiologic research on chronic diseases, nutrition and lifestyles. As Principal Investigator (PI), he has designed and directed large trials and cohorts, including SUN, PREDIMED and PREDIMED-Plus, which have shed unparalleled light and scientific evidence from Spain with worldwide impact. Since 2013, he designed and is PI of the PREDIMED-Plus trial, funded by the European Research Council with an Advanced Research Grant (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/340918/).

Since 2013, he has also been actively involved, as co-PI, together with Frank B. Hu (Harvard University), in several NIH-funded grants on cardiovascular disease or type 2 diabetes assessing metabolomics in the context of the Mediterranean diet interventions.

In 1995 he founded and started the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Navarra, which today is one of the most fruitful and leading Departments in Spain.  Since then, Prof. Martínez-González has published more than 1400 articles and abstracts indexed in Web of Science and he is one of the most cited scientists in Spain in the ranking of all scientific areas in recent years. He has been mentor of a large group of Full Professors and Associate Professors of Epidemiology and Public Health.

He is the editor of the main textbooks in Spanish on Biostatistics (Elsevier), Epidemiology (Ariel-Planeta) and Public Health (Elsevier). In 2022, he chaired the Committee for designing a large national cohort in Spain (IMPaCT) similar to the UKBiobank, which is currently undergoing its recruitment phase.

As a popularizer, his recent publications with Editorial Planeta stand out: “Salud a Ciencia Cierta (Evidence-based Health)” (2018) and “¿Qué comes? (What do you eat?)” (2020), “La sanidad en llamas (The Health System on fire)” (2021) and “Salmones, hormonas y pantallas (Salmon, hormones and screens)” (2023).

In 2023 he obtained a second Advanced Research Grant del ERC to develop between 2024 and 2028 the largest ever conducted trial on the health effects of alcohol.

He received several distinctions and awards both in the US (Grace Goldsmith Award, Rankin-Skratud lecture) and in Spain, including the prestigious Premio Nacional de Investigación en Medicina Gregorio Marañón 2022 given by the King and Queen of Spain in March 2023. In 2024 he was named Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Almería.

His registry of indexed publications and further information can be found in:

https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=yZw1w4kAAAAJ&hl=en

https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/807499

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1hc_rNrdFb9Am/bibliography/public/

https://research.com/u/miguel-a-martinez-gonzalez

https://ranking.influscience.eu/influsciencers/ranking-de-autores-y-autoras/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Ángel_Martínez-González

Policymakers and clinicians are currently perplexed on how to reduce alcohol harms in drinkers, because of contradictory guidelines: abstention is proposed as the healthiest option by many health advocates, stating that “there is no safe level of alcohol intake”; but most nonrandomized studies found lower all-cause mortality and other beneficial outcomes in moderate drinkers than in abstainers. Potential biases may compromise observational and Mendelian Randomization studies. A large pragmatic randomized controlled trial (RCT) of realistic advice aimed to change behaviour addressing clinical endpoints is long overdue. It will provide first-level evidence to confront the harms of one of the most widely used substances by humankind.

The European Research Council funded (Advanced Research Grant, 2023-2028) UNATI (University of Navarra Alumni Trialist Initiative), a 4-year non-inferiority RCT with >10,000 drinkers (men 50-70 years or women 55-75 years consuming >=3 but <40 drinks/wk).

The goal is to randomize 10,000 drinkers in a 1:1 ratio to repeatedly (4 contacts/year) receive during 4 years two different advices:

1. abstention;
2. moderation (<=7 drinks/wk in women and <=14 drinks/wk in men), avoidance of binge drinking, with preference for red wine consumed always with meals, and consumption spread out throughout the week, following the traditional Mediterranean Alcohol Drinking Pattern (MADP). Moderate consumption is hypothesized to be non-inferior. No initiation or increment in alcohol intake will be promoted.

The primary endpoint is a composite global index of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular events, any invasive cancer, liver cirrhosis, type 2 diabetes, depression, dementia, injury requiring hospital admission or tuberculosis or other infections requiring hospitalization. As to december 2024, 2,500 participants were already recruited. The UNATI trial will provide for the first time an evidence-based answer to a question of the utmost interest in clinical medicine, given the high prevalence of moderate alcohol intake, and the current situation of equipoise with opposing views in the scientific community on the most sensible advice for moderate drinkers.