[25 Years in nutrition and food research in the Iberoamerican knowledge area]. / 25 Años de investigación en nutrición y alimentación en el espacio Iberoamericano del conocimiento.

INTRODUCTION: Research is usually considered a reliable indicator of the degree of development. Research in a problematic area such as food and nutrition for a given region, should have an impact on scientific production in agreement with the importance of the problem, the research capacity and the available resources for generating such a research. OBJECTIVE: To identify some indicators of Iberoamerican research in nutrition and food. METHOD: Retrospective study of Iberoamerican scientific production in nutrition and food in the last 25 years. The data were obtained from the bibliographic database Science Citation Index Expanded, Journal Citation Reports Science Edition Database 2011, both included in the Web of Knowledge (Thomson Reuters), and the database of the World Bank. RESULTS: 49,808 papers were registered, the 3.20% of the Health Sciences collection in SCI. The evolution was fitted to an exponential model, N&D (R² 0.962) and FS&T (R² 0.995). The average production in N&D per average population was higher in Spain with 0.659 papers/million. The highest rates of productivity and profitability were found in Guatemala with 12.963 papers/1000 researchers and 1.486 papers/million $ respectively. The average production in FS&T of the different countries per average population was higher in Cuba with 21.624 papers/million. The productivity index was higher in Uruguay with 25.999 papers/thousand researchers. The profitability index was higher in Guatemala with 0.271 papers/million $. CONCLUSION: There is exponential growth in the two categories studied N&D and FS&T. Productivity and profitability was higher in countries with low R&D (Research & Development) budget.

[Quality of life questionnaire related to nutritional status]. / Cuestionario de calidad de vida relacionado con el estado nutricional (CaVEN).

OBJECTIVE: To build and validate an instrument to measure the perceived quality of life in the nutritional status. MATERIAL AND METHODS: By focal groups and interviews with nutrition experts, the dimensions with greater affectation were identified. After the judge test, the CaVEN questionnaire was defined. For its valuation a multicentric study was performed, participating 7 Spanish hospitals. The internal structure of the questionnaire was evaluated by explanatory factorial analysis. Reliability was tested using the Cronbach α coefficient and the validity of the criteria with the nutritional Gold Standards. RESULTS: A questionnaire of 26 items with 6 health dimensions was built. It was applied to 68 patients that were valued in the Nutrition Units. The test KMO was 0.756, showing a good accuracy in the Factorial Analysis. The existence of principal dimension of inertia was found (Bartlett p < 0.01). The 6 dimensions showed an accumulative variance of 77.670. It was observed a direct relationship in the Subjective Global Valuation and CaVEN (p < 0.01) and with the "Mini Nutritional Assessment Short" (p = 0.02), which was interpreted as the greater affectation of the nutritional status, the lower the quality of life detected by the CaVEN. CONCLUSIONS: The CaVEN questionnaire has proved a useful tool for assessing the quality of life related to nutritional status, even in groups with little nutritional alterations.