Prize Winners

Curriculum Vitae

Senior Lecturer at the Autonomous University of Madrid. Head of the Paediatrics Department at the Jiménez Díaz Foundation

Jury ruling

The jury for the Rei Jaume I Prize for Clinical Medicine, meeting in Castellón, has unanimously decided to award the 1996 prize to Ms Mercedes Ruiz Moreno.

This is in recognition of her contribution through numerous highly prestigious international medical publications, for which she has received significant accolades. Her work stands out not only for the new insights it provides but also, and in particular, for its significant impact on the treatment and prevention of liver diseases in children.

She has made a number of important contributions. She began by determining the prevalence of viral hepatitis A and B in Spanish children; later, using markers of hepatitis B viral replication, she established the progression of the disease and its irreversible nature. For the first time worldwide, she demonstrated the effect of alpha interferon in children with chronic hepatitis B, proving its safety and therapeutic efficacy. She studied the progression of the disease in children, laying the foundations for identifying predictors of a good response to treatment. More recently, she has published findings on the identification of hepatitis C in Spanish children. These results have been published in medical journals worldwide.