Marcos López Hoyos

The Ministry of Health has announced that Spain will receive the MV Hondius in the Canary Islands “in accordance with international law and the spirit of humanitarianism”. The government is thus responding to a request from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the European Union for the cruise ship, which is travelling from Argentina and has an outbreak of hantavirus on board, to dock in the Canary Islands, in the port of Granadilla, Tenerife. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has assessed which passengers should be evacuated from the ship to Cape Verde, where it is currently located, and which will continue on to the Canary Islands. Once there, they will be examined and transferred to their home countries in accordance with safety protocols. The cruise ship is expected to arrive in the archipelago in three or four days.

Measles cases in Europe and Central Asia fell in 2025 compared with 2024, according to preliminary data reported by 53 countries in the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region. This decline aligns with the preliminary figures published this week by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). According to the WHO, countries in Europe and Central Asia reported 33,998 measles cases in 2025, representing a decrease of nearly 75 % compared with the 127,412 cases recorded in 2024. In Spain, however, the number of cases has increased, as shown by data from the Carlos III Health Institute. A few weeks ago, the WHO announced that Spain had lost its measles-free status.

Severe combined immunodeficiency due to ADA enzyme deficiency is a rare disease that, without treatment, usually causes death within the first two years of life. These "bubble children" are currently treated with a bone marrow transplant or with injections that aim to restore, to the extent possible, the function of this enzyme. Now, an international team presents the results of a gene therapy administered to 62 children with the disease between 2012 and 2019. The therapy was effective in 95% of cases and did not cause serious complications, according to the authors, whose work is published in the journal NEJM. 

The Karolinska Institute has awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology to Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi for describing how the immune system is regulated so as not to harm us. His groundbreaking discoveries on peripheral immune tolerance have spurred the development of new treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases.

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.

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. 

Toledo and Alicante are suffering the first outbreaks of measles recorded in Spain since the pandemic, El País reported today. In total, 15 cases have been confirmed since 1 January, of which seven are imported and eight autochthonous.

A study has analysed more than 100 environmental factors and their impact on the immune response. After studying about a thousand volunteers, its conclusions are that smoking is the factor that causes the most alterations in defences. While some changes are transient, others may remain for years after quitting. The results are published in the journal Nature.

Currently, when an organ transplant is performed, the patient has to take immunosuppressive drugs to prevent his or her system from rejecting the new organ. These drugs must be taken for life and have numerous side effects. In a phase 1 clinical trial, researchers gave patients receiving a liver transplant regulatory dendritic cells derived from the original donor, with the hypothesis that these cells could 'teach' the recipient's immune system to tolerate the new organ. The research, published in Science Translational Medicine, suggests that this treatment could reduce or even eliminate the need for long-term use of immunosuppressants.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has licensed Hipra's vaccine - currently called Bimervax - against SARS-CoV-2 as a booster in people aged 16 years and older who have previously been vaccinated with mRNA vaccines. The EMA began the ongoing evaluation of the vaccine, which was expected to be approved in the middle of last year, on 29 March 2022.