Àngela Mora (Maials, 2004), an athlete from Club Gimnàstic FEDAC Lleida, is making history. In 2021, in Pamplona, ​​she became the first athlete with Down syndrome to participate in a Spanish National Artistic Gymnastics Championship. After her recent triumph at the Special Olympics in Oslo last September, she now plans to participate in more international competitions, such as the one to be held in Atlanta, USA, next February.

People with Down syndrome are more likely to consume sugars and fats uncontrollably and suffer from obesity and metabolic diseases such as diabetes due to a genetic alteration. And all of this can harm them cognitively, according to a pioneering European study led by the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona. "It's not just a question of weight or aesthetics; in Down syndrome, obesity is a risk factor for cognitive impairment and certainly for neurodegeneration," said Dr. Mara Dierssen, leader of the cellular and systems neurobiology group of the systems biology program at the CRG and president of the Consell (Spanish Consell).