Natália Tomborelli Bellafronte

I am a dietitian with experience in nutrition assessment, body composition, energy expenditure, and physical performance. My interest in research began at undergraduation studies. I realized there was a significant prevalence of underdiagnosed malnutrition, including poor diet quality and poor physical function. This impression set my interest in nutritional screening and assessment. As a result, I studied these themes in patients diagnosed with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). Besides observing that malnutrition was underrecognized, I also observed a significant failure rate when traditional dietary therapy was used to restore nutritional status. So, I am also interested to investigate the most adequate nutritional and physical interventions that support important clinical changes and patients outcomes. My early research training provided me with the foundational skills required to successfully improve nutritional and physical performance screening and assessment as well as advance the evidence. My masters granted me the opportunity to learn the interaction between body composition, energy expenditure and physical activity. This experience reinforced my interest in body composition assessment and nutritional status diagnosis in chronic catabolic diseases. During my exchange in Spain, I learned about the relationship between physical function, nutritional status and quality of life. This internship in Spain awakened my interest in improvement of physical function as a mediator of quality-of-life. My experience in nutrition and physical assessment makes me an asset to the Prof. Gillis prehabilitation lab at McGill University (Canada) where I was a postdoctoral fellow. Prehabilitation is a new field of study that aims to prepare patients physically, metabolically, and mentally for the stress of surgery. Nowadays as a professor at Federal University of Parana, I am interested in investigating the most adequate methods for nutritional screening and assessment as well as the most efficient multimodal therapy (i.e. nutrition and exercise intervention) for patients with CKD along the disease trajectory. As kidney transplant is the treatment of choice, surgical patients are also under my interest. (Fonte: Currículo Lattes)