Ana Virgolino

University of Lisbon | UL · Institute of Environmental Health

Although the health literacy level of the general population was described recently, little is known about its specific levels among older adults in Portugal. Therefore, this cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the levels of health literacy demonstrated by older adults in Portugal and explore associated factors. Using a randomly generated li...

The COVID-19 pandemic increased psychosocial risk factors among healthcare professionals (HCPs). Objective: To characterize Portuguese HCPs mental health (MH), estimate anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and burnout symptoms, and identify risk/protective factors. A cross-sectional online survey and a longitudinal assessment...

Monkeypox virus (MPXV) was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) in mid-2022 to be a public health emergency of international concern, following its spread around the world after circulating in Western and Central Africa. This new outbreak is concentrated in men who have sex with men (MSM). Moreover, beyond the epidemiological change, com...

Monkeypox, a neglected and re-emergent zoonotic disease caused by monkeypox virus (MPXV) infection, has been endemic in Central and Western Africa for decades. More recently, an outbreak has spread to a global level, occurring in sites with no previous reported cases and being clustered among men who have sex with men, suggesting new modes of trans...

The pandemic is aggravating health inequalities, particularly mental health inequalities, while revealing the social determinants of these inequalities, including migration as a social determinant that mediates the interaction of social, economic, cultural, institutional, and structural factors with health indicators. Therefore, it is of most relev...

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2022.107476

Background Mechanistic studies show that heavy metals interfere with the hematopoietic system by inhibiting key enzymes, which could lead to anemia. However, the link between children's exposure and red blood cell (RBC) parameters has been inconsistent. We aimed to summarize evidence on human studies exploring the association between exposure to le...

Since the first case of human monkeypox was diagnosed in 1970, the disease remained endemic in several countries in West and Central Africa. In 1996, there was a sudden increase in cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and since 2017 an ongoing outbreak in Nigeria took place, probably related to the population growth, human invasion of M...

The hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is an important public health problem, affecting millions of people worldwide. People who inject drugs (PWID) are at increased risk of HCV infection due to, among other factors, widespread unsafe injecting practices, such as sharing of infected equipment or unprotected sexual practices. In Portugal, there is a...

Human biomonitoring (HBM) is a crucial approach for exposure assessment, as emphasised in the European Commission’s Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS). HBM can help to improve chemical policies in five major key areas: (1) assessing internal and aggregate exposure in different target populations; 2) assessing exposure to chemicals across l...

Background Involving consumers in the development and assessment of mass media campaigns has been advocated, though research is still lacking. This study aimed to explore opinions and attitudes of citizens, health professionals, communication professionals, and digital influencers regarding the development and implementation of healthy eating promo...

Introduction: Assessment of SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence may detect the real spread of the virus because antibody data can provide a long-lasting measure of infection. Existing serological studies in Portugal have tested new serology methods, albeit with small sample sizes and a lack the focus on geographical regions with a high rate of infection cas...

Background Acrylamide is a food contaminant linked to developmental toxicity in animals and possibly in humans. Objectives We performed a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of epidemiological studies evaluating the relationship between maternal acrylamide exposure during pregnancy and the risk of being small for gestational age (SGA...

Obtaining holistic information about health and health determinants at the population level should also include data on environmental risk factors of health. So far, only a few countries have combined, at the national level, health and human biomonitoring (HBM) surveys to collect extensive information on health, lifestyles, biological health determ...

Diet is a main source of acrylamide exposure to humans. Existing observational data on the relationship between dietary exposure to acrylamide and risk of cancer are inconsistent. We performed a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of epidemiological studies evaluating the association between dietary acrylamide exposure and several sit...

Background Unemployment can involve financial strain and major psychosocial challenges. Integration of the existing evidence is needed to better characterize the association between unemployment and mental health, independently of macroeconomic contexts. Aims Main objectives of this study: (a) review, integrate, and summarize evidence about the as...

The promotion of physical distancing is a highly effective way of preventing the interpersonal transmission of pathogenic agents, including SARS-CoV-2. However, the protection of physical health through physical distance should not promote social distancing, which is a relevant disrupter of human subjective and psychological well-being. Interperson...

Background Social Prescribing (SP) is an innovative strategy to respond to the non-clinical health needs of the population. A Social Prescribing Local System (SPLS) can be defined as a set of joined community, health, and social organizations to foster SP-oriented activities. This study aimed to develop and assess the feasibility of an SPLS impleme...

Background Evidence shows that individuals can engage in maladaptive behaviours as a response to a pandemic context, which can compromise their health and wellbeing. This project aims to characterize self-reported changes in addiction-related behaviours and associated factors in the adult population during the first COVID-19 lockdown, in Portugal....

Issue The COVID-19 pandemic caused profound disruptive changes worldwide. Mental health (MH) and wellbeing (WB) have been particularly affected, namely with increased levels of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and burnout symptoms. Several factors can have contributed to individuals' vulnerability, including perceived uncertainty...

Background Mental health is being impacted by COVID-19, as a result of both the globalized perception of health risk and the massive social and economic measures, required to control the pandemic. A main goal of this study, the SM-COVID19, was to characterize the mental health of the general population and to identify vulnerable groups, during the...

Data generated by the rapidly evolving human biomonitoring (HBM) programmes are providing invaluable opportunities to support and advance regulatory risk assessment and management of chemicals in occupational and environmental health domains. However, heterogeneity across studies, in terms of design, terminology, 2 Data value chain Data governance...

This study aimed to understand how beliefs and attitudes regarding COVID-19 are associated with self-perceived changes in food consumption during lockdown between March 19 and May 2, 2020. We conducted a cross-sectional study with a non-probabilistic weighted sample of the Portuguese population. Data were collected using an online survey and teleph...

Health and environmental psychology have long been walking side by side. These two disciplines of psychology have imported and applied common psychological frameworks and each of them developed specific theories and methodologies. At a time when humankind faces tremendous challenges ahead (climate change, global warming, ocean sickness, the reemerg...

The benefits of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for persons living with HIV (PLWH) are well established. Rapid ART initiation can lead to improved clinical outcomes. Portugal has one of the highest rates of new HIV diagnoses in the European Union, and an average time until ART initiation above the recommendations established by the national guideline...

The increasing number of international migrants (ranging from 153 million in 1990 to ~272 million in 2019) brought to attention the wide variation of national contexts concerning the policy measures to protect migrants' rights and ensuring their equal access to basic and essential services, namely in health. Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) is...

The increasing number of human biomonitoring (HBM) studies undertaken in recent decades has brought to light the need to harmonise procedures along all phases of the study, including sampling, data collection and analytical methods to allow data comparability. The first steps towards harmonisation are the identification and collation of HBM methodo...

Women are exposed to increased burden of mental disorders during the perinatal period: 13-19% experience postpartum depression. Perinatal psychological suffering affects early mother-child relationship, impacting child's emotional and cognitive development. Return-to-work brings additional vulnerability given the required balance between parenting...

Social prescribing (SP) is an approach that promotes the use of local non-clinical activities by people. The referral is usually made by primary health-care professionals, in a process wherein local providers play a pivotal role. The main objective of this study was to identify domains of intervention and evidence about the effectiveness of SP prog...

Self-management of health requires skills to obtain, process, understand, and use health-related information. Assessment of adolescents' functional health literacy requires valid, reliable, and low-burden tools. The main objective of this study was to adapt and study the psychometric properties of the Newest Vital Sign for the Portuguese adolescent...

Identifying the opportunities and barriers of promoting and fulfilling the sexual health rights of migrants remains a challenge that requires systematic assessment. Such an assessment would include estimating the influence of acculturation processes on sexual and reproductive health, and mapping intersectional inequities that influence migrants’ se...

Over the last few decades, citizen awareness and perception of chemical products has been a topic of interest, particularly concerning national and international policy decision makers, expert/scientific platforms, and the European Union itself. To date, few qualitative studies on human biomonitoring have analysed communication materials, made reco...

This study aimed to describe the underlying process, used methods and major recommendations emerging from a comprehensive and prospective health impact assessment of the endorsement of a front-of-pack nutrition labelling (FOP-NL) system by the Portuguese health authorities. A mixed-methods approach was used to gather information on the impact of fo...

Cape Verdean governments have intensified the investment on the National Reproductive Health Program, aiming to provide universal and qualified services, especially to the youngest people. Nevertheless, data suggest that some health challenges remain in this group (e.g., high rates of early/unplanned pregnancies, illegal abortions, sexual risk beha...

A pandemia da COVID-19 provocou alterações profundas na forma de viver, individual e comunitária. Essas alterações, aliadas ao medo e incer- teza crescentes de infetar ou ser infetado e ao medo de perder emprego ou rendimento decorrentes da imprevisibilidade na evolução da doença, têm sido apontadas como potenciais fatores de risco para a saúde men...

Background: Caregivers of people with dementia report stress, depression and economic burden compared to other caregivers. This study aimed to characterize the daily lives experiences of dementia patients’ informal caregivers and to uncover day-to-day sources of expenses related with dementia care. Research design and methods: Qualitative observati...

Environmental health is at the intersection between health and the environment. However, it still has a recent (and narrow) history as a scientific area, mainly addressing human biomonitoring and toxicological issues. Only recently additional environmental ‘layers’, other than the traditional chemical, biological and physical environmental determin...

Front-of-pack nutrition labels (FOP-NL) are efficient tools for increasing consumers' awareness of the nutritional quality of food products, prompting healthier food choices. The main goal of this study was to evaluate the impact of four FOP-NL schemes - Traffic Light label (TL), Guideline Daily Amounts (%GDA), Nutri-Score (NS) and Health Star Rati...

Introduction: The growing aging population poses sustainability challenges for health systems. Social Prescribing arises as an innovative strategy to tackle these new demands as there is increasing evidence of its suitability to respond to non-clinical needs identified in the elderly population. This chapter seeks to identify and summarize the exis...

Human biomonitoring (HBM) depends on high-quality human samples to identify status and trends in exposure and ensure comparability of results. In this context, much effort has been put into the development of standardized processes and quality assurance for sampling and chemical analysis, while effects of sample storage and shipment on sample quali...

Environmental health is at the intersection between health and the environment. However, it still has a recent (and narrow) history as a scientific area, mainly addressing human biomonitoring and toxicological issues. Only recently additional environmental 'layers', other than the traditional chemical, biological and physical environmental determin...

Aims: Interpretive front-of-package nutrition labelling can contribute to healthier food habits. This systematic review aimed to examine the effectiveness of interpretive front-of-package nutrition labelling schemes on consumers’ food choices, namely at the moment of food purchase, and to analyse if this potential front-of-package nutrition labelli...

Additional Deliverable Report AD4.1. WP4 Prioritisation and input to the an-nual workplan. HBM4EU

Background: The existing knowledge on the interplay between reproductive and sexual health, migration and acculturation is recent and inconsistent, particularly on the sociocultural motives and constraints regarding fertility. Therefore, sexual and reproductive health (SRH) surveys are needed to provide accurate and comparable indicators to identi...

Game-based interventions (GBI) have been used to promote health-related outcomes, including cognitive functions. Criteria for game-elements (GE) selection are insufficiently characterized in terms of their adequacy to patients' clinical conditions or targeted cognitive outcomes. This study aimed to identify GE applied in GBI for cognitive assessmen...

Environmental health (EH) lies at the interface between two closely connected “old” concepts whose complexity has evolved in parallel to better accommodate the knowledge and capacity to increase the longevity and wellbeing of humankind, thus assuming an anthropocentric perspective. On the other hand, the history of EH as a scientific domain is stil...

The prevalence of non-communicable diseases is rapidly increasing, and evidence shows that diet and lifestyle are key areas of intervention to decrease their burden. Olive oil is considered one of the key nutritional components responsible for the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, which is characterized by the use of olive oil in meals as the mai...

Introduction: The links between body weight and sexuality, notably sexual dysfunction (SD), are intricate and not yet fully understood. A more individual-focused evaluation of sexual difficulties, as recently provided by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), contributes to improve precision in SD diagnosis and has the...

Background Epidemiologic evidence highlights the harmful consequences of unemployment on health and well-being. This emphasizes the need to design low-cost interventions to prevent the adverse mental health effects of unemployment. The main aim of this study was to create expert-consensus regarding development and implementation of a brief, sustain...

Human biomonitoring is a well-established field of research with high rate of scientific production. Still, there is a lack of integrated information required for the production of adequate knowledge in this area. In this context, the development of suitable methods for systematic mapping of available evidence and identification of research gaps is...

Human biomonitoring (HBM) is a well-established field of research. Although in the last decades numerous studies have been published, there is an evident lack of integrated information required for the production of adequate knowledge in this area. This emphasizes the need to develop suitable methods for systematic mapping of available evidence and...

Abstract: Introduction: Videogames have been used as tools for training cognitive functions, with both clinical and nonclinical populations. However, the evidence about what makes videogames effective in promoting general or specific cognitive functions is still scarce. Objective: To identify, integrate and summarize knowledge about effective video...

Background Economic crises and unemployment have profound impact on mental health and well-being. Main goal of the Healthy Employment (HE) project is to enhance intersectoral actions promoting mental health among unemployed, namely through the implementation and effectiveness-evaluation of short-term and sustainable group interventions. Methods Th...

Sexuality is a central part of human life and overall wellbeing. As awareness on issues of sexuality has been increasing, sexual health history is ever more thought of as an indispensable part of the general health assessment. The main purpose of taking a sexual history is to assess a patient’s sexual background and current functioning. The biopsyc...

Sexuality is a central part of human life and overall wellbeing. As awareness on issues of sexuality has been increasing, sexual health history is ever more thought of as an indispensable part of the general health assessment. The main purpose of taking a sexual history is to assess a patient’s sexual background and current functioning. The biopsyc...

Introduction Economic crises have consequences on labor market, with impacts on mental health (MH) and psychological well-being (PWB). We describe the effectiveness of an intervention among unemployed, performed within EEA Grants Healthy Employment project. Objectives Evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention for MH literacy, PWB and resilienc...

Medicalization of society has become a major issue over the last half-century, transforming common human events into medical conditions suitable for treatment. As discussed by Annemarie Jutel (2006), nowadays being “overweight” is not only a descriptor of physical appearance, as it has become a disease entity, used by the media and in medical setti...

Several authors have drawn a critical review on the concepts of ‘third age’ cultural representations and of ‘successful aging’, presenting a reconfiguration of sexual life courses in newly complex discourses. Contemporary sexual medicine presents sexual function as an indicator of overall health, transforming changing sexual capacities into health...

BACKGROUND: Economic crises have deleterious impact on mental health. Unemployment and precarious work conditions pose an increased risk to psychological wellbeing. Effective community-based interventions need to be developed within the context of mental health equity-oriented programs. OBJECTIVES: To identify effective short-term community-based i...

Introduction: Portugal is facing the effects of a recent economical crisis endorsing a long-term financial austerity policy. The deleterious impact of economical crises on mental health has been well established in different countries. Psychological support programs have been developed and tested for protecting mental health among unemployed, thoug...

Introdução: A crise económica, que registou um pico em 2008, conduziu a um aumento exponencial das taxas de desemprego em vários países, incluindo Portugal. A associação entre crises económicas e um pior estado de saúde tem sido bem documentada, com um foco particular no suicídio e em sintomas de depressão. Objetivos: Integrar e sintetizar o conhec...

This study used a mixed methods approach to investigate the intimate world of men’s sexual problems in Portugal, and particularly erectile dysfunction, focusing on the interplay between individual, societal and relational factors. First, a community-based survey was designed, with 323 primary health care users, to investigate how sociocultural fact...