Health Institute Carlos III

An international team has analysed data from more than 160,000 people in 40 different countries, including Spain, to study differences in the speed of ageing between regions and the factors responsible. According to the results, European countries show healthier ageing, while low-income countries are associated with accelerated ageing. Protective factors include physical factors such as air quality; social factors such as socioeconomic and gender equality; and sociopolitical factors such as freedom of political parties and democratic elections. The study is published in the journal Nature Medicine.

The State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) has reported that a warm weather will bring temperatures 6 to 7 ºC higher than normal for this time of year throughout Spain. According to AEMET, 29 May to 1 June could be the warmest days for this time of year since at least 1950.

According to the results of a phase 2 trial, an oral norovirus vaccine generated a strong mucosal immune response and even reduced viral shedding in vaccinated volunteers. Signs of the vaccine's efficacy support its potential to address the lack of safe and reliable vaccines against this virus, which is a major cause of gastrointestinal infections worldwide. The results were published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

If immunisation rates continue to decline over an extended period, measles and even other eradicated diseases—such as rubella and polio—could re-emerge in the United States at endemic levels, according to a new study published today in the journal JAMA.

A set of articles published in Nature and Nature Methods draws a high-resolution map of the structure of and connections between the brain cells of mice. The map is based on data from a single cubic millimetre of brain and includes more than 200,000 cells, around 84,000 neurons and 524 million synaptic connections. Although this is a very small part of the mouse brain, it will help us understand how different types of cells work together.

A team from Canada and the United States has found a candidate to form part of a new class of antibiotics, lariocidin. This could be effective against multi-resistant bacteria. The finding is published in the journal Nature.

From 1 January to 23 February 2025, more than half as many cases of measles had already been reported in Spain as in the previous year. To analyse the causes of this spike, assess the seriousness of the situation and the measures to be taken, the Science Media Centre Spain organised a briefing with Noemí López Perea, researcher at the National Epidemiology Centre (CNE-ISCIII), Fernando Moraga-Llop, paediatrician, spokesperson and senior member of the Spanish Vaccinology Association (AEV), and María del Mar Tomás, spokesperson of the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC).

A team of researchers has used embryonic stem cell engineering to create a bipaternal mouse - a mouse with two male parents - that lived to adulthood. Their results, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, show how targeting a particular set of genes involved in reproduction enabled this breakthrough in unisexual reproduction in mammals.

Patients receiving organ transplants often need to be treated with long-term immunosuppressants to reduce the likelihood of rejection, which has numerous side effects. An international team has shown in crab macaque monkeys that, in the case of heart transplantation, the use of these drugs could be avoided if combined with a kidney transplant from the same donor. The results are published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. 

As announced, the new US president, Donald Trump, has signed on his first day in office an executive order for the United States to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. This is the second time Trump has withdrawn his country from the signatory states of the most important climate change agreement, as he did in 2020.