Journalists

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a serious genetic condition that causes progressive muscle weakness and atrophy, including of the heart. There is currently no cure, and it mainly affects boys and young men. A cell therapy called Deramiocel could slow down muscle weakness in children and young people with advanced-stage DMD, according to a phase III clinical trial published in The Lancet, the first of its kind. The study involved 106 children and young people aged between 10 and 22 with advanced DMD. According to the results, after one year, participants who received the drug lost mobility in their arms 54 per cent more slowly than those in the placebo group, although this did not result in a clear difference in the heart’s ability to pump blood.

The fire in Ávila, which merged with the one in the south-western mountains of Madrid last Saturday and spread to the province of Toledo, remains unstabilised, although it is under control in some areas. Wind gusts of up to 30 km/h will complicate fire-fighting efforts on Monday, according to the Madrid 112 Safety and Emergency Agency. The fire in Ávila is now the largest in Spain’s recent history. Meanwhile, the fire that broke out on Saturday in La Vall d’Uixó (Castellón), which has spread into the Sierra de Espadán Natural Park, has not yet been stabilised either. In total, around 100,000 people have been evacuated or are under lockdown across all the fire fronts.

A team from Canada analyzed nearly one million emergency room visits for migraines or headaches that occurred between 2010 and 2023 in two Canadian provinces during the peak wildfire season. Their analysis shows that the presence of small particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5) from wildfire smoke was associated with an increase in emergency room visits for migraines and headaches. The study is published in JAMA Network Open. In Spain, the Ministry of Health has published health recommendations for action in the event of wildfires. The Community of Madrid, with several active fire fronts, has shared this video with safety and protection tips.

In 2025, a six-year-old Chinese girl named Mei (not her real name) became the first person in the world to undergo gene-editing therapy targeting the brain. She had a developmental delay associated with a rare genetic syndrome, Snijders-Blok-Campeau syndrome. According to Science, her parents had raised $860,000 to partially fund the treatment at Xinhua Hospital in Shanghai (China), led by Zilong Qiu, one of the neuroscientists competing to apply base editors — a version of CRISPR — in children with rare diseases. Now, Science and Retraction Watch have exclusively revealed that Mei died from a severe immune reaction seven days after receiving the treatment, a story that had been kept hidden. The entry on clinicaltrials.gov has not been updated since 2025; and when Qiu and his team published animal studies related to the trial in the journal Nature in early 2026, according to the journalistic investigation, they omitted any reference to Mei and her family.

Early this morning, the Minister of Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, declared a state of emergency of national interest in the Community of Madrid and the province of Ávila due to the forest fires in Villa del Prado, San Martín de Valdeiglesias and Burgohondo. According to Carlos Novillo, the Regional Minister for the Environment, Agriculture and the Interior of the Community of Madrid, the fires were beyond the capacity of the fire services to extinguish and posed a serious threat to the population. The Madrid 112 Security and Emergency Agency has reported that, although the night-time firefighting efforts have been effective, the fires have still not been contained or brought under control. More than 10,000 people remain evacuated.

A team from the United States exposed pregnant mice to a mild inflammatory agent so that their offspring would develop brain and behavioural changes similar to those seen in autism spectrum disorder. When these offspring reached adulthood, the researchers administered a dose of rapamycin — an immunosuppressant — and found that several of these changes improved for a few hours, including cerebral hyperactivity, the risk of seizures, sensory hypersensitivity, repetitive behaviours and abnormal organisation of the brain’s functional network. The authors, whose work is published in Nature Communications, emphasise in a press release that these effects are temporary and that repeated administration loses its efficacy. Furthermore, they point out that rapamycin’s high potential for toxicity and the fact that the study was conducted on mice rule out its widespread use in humans.

To date, more than 6,000 exoplanets — planets orbiting a star other than the Sun — have been discovered, but no moon outside the Solar System — known as an exomoon — has ever been definitively identified. Now, a study published in Nature presents evidence of what could be an exomoon orbiting a brown dwarf — an object halfway between a star and a planet. By analysing radial velocity data from observations made by the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope, a team has identified a signal indicating the presence of a satellite with a minimum mass of 0.9 times that of Jupiter and an orbital period of around 170 days. “Although it is unclear whether this exosatellite will meet the criteria—yet to be defined—for being considered an exomoon, it represents an important step towards that first indisputable detection,” the authors state.

Since 2012, a population of brown catfish in a lake between Canada and the United States has been observed to have a very high incidence of melanoma, a tumor generally associated with sun exposure. Now, a team from Vermont (USA) has discovered that, in this case, it is a transmissible cancer that spreads from fish to fish like a parasite. This finding represents the fourth known transmissible cancer in the animal kingdom and the first in any species of fish or freshwater animal; previous examples include facial tumor disease in Tasmanian devils, a venereal tumor in dogs, and leukemia-like transmissible diseases in clams, mussels, and other bivalve mollusks. The researchers published their results in Nature and emphasize that the disease poses no known risk to humans.

Data from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) show that, as of 22 July, 119,458 hectares have been burnt in Spain. The average number of hectares burnt from 2006 to 2025 up to this date stands at 35,736 hectares. The fire in the Sierra Norte de Guadalajara, which has scorched more than 30,000 hectares and is still active, together with numerous fire fronts in other provinces and the fire in Los Gallardos (Almería), in which 13 people died, have caused the total area burnt to soar.

Most countries overuse antibiotics, particularly those with the greatest potential to cause resistance, according to a new study published in the journal The Lancet Public Health using data from 186 countries, including Spain. The study estimated optimal national levels of antibiotic use based on the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) AWaRe guidelines, which classify antibiotics into the ‘access’ group – first-line drugs, such as amoxicillin – the ‘caution’ group – more potent drugs with more restricted use – and the ‘reserve’ group – drugs of last resort, for resistant infections. Of the 67 regions with data on antibiotic use, 72 per cent used quantities exceeding those considered optimal, and 99 per cent overused antibiotics in the ‘caution’ group – those that contribute most to the development of resistance. High-income regions used fewer antibiotics than low- and middle-income regions.