SMC Spain

The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, announced on Tuesday from Dubai that Spain will ban children under the age of 16 from accessing social media and will adopt other measures to increase control over digital platforms and ensure that their executives are held accountable for violations. Sánchez made this announcement in his speech to the plenary session of the World Government Summit and announced that next week the government will approve a series of measures, including this ban.

A phase 3 clinical trial conducted in China tested 210 patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer—the most common type—to see whether the time of day when immunotherapy and chemotherapy were administered influenced their effectiveness. The data indicate that, on average, those who received therapy after 3 p.m. did not see their cancer worsen for 5.4 months. In contrast, those who received it before that time did not see their cancer worsen for an average of 11.7 months, almost twice as long. Overall, response rates were 56.2% and 69.5%, respectively. The results, published in Nature Medicine, suggest that scheduling therapy early in the day may offer a simple and cost-free way to improve treatment efficacy.

Between April 2021 and December 2022, more than 100,000 women in Sweden were randomly assigned to either AI-assisted mammography screening or double reading, where two radiologists review each mammogram without the aid of AI. AI-assisted screening identified more women with significant cancers without a higher rate of false positives and also achieved a 12% reduction in the rate of interval cancers—those that appear between mammograms because they went unnoticed or are newly developed and more aggressive—compared to the double reading procedure. This is the first clinical trial of its kind, and its results are published in The Lancet.

Genetics accounts for approximately 55% of the variability of human lifespan, which is more than double previous estimates, according to research published in the journal Science. The analysis is based on mathematical models and data from twin registries in Denmark, Sweden, and the United States. According to the authors, this high heritability is similar to that of most other complex human traits and to the influence of genetics on the life expectancy of other species.

The body composition index – used to estimate body fat reserves – of polar bears in Svalbard declined between 1995 and 2000, but then increased until 2019, despite the fact that the number of ice-free days in this Norwegian Arctic archipelago increased by about four days per year during that period. "Increases in some prey species, including harbour seals, reindeer, and walrus, may partly offset reduced access to seals," the authors write in Scientific Reports.

AlphaGenome is a deep learning model developed by Google DeepMind capable of predicting the function of DNA sequences up to one million base pairs long. An evaluation of the tool shows that it matches or improves upon the predictive ability of existing models in 25 of the 26 tests performed. According to the authors, who are part of Google DeepMind itself, AlphaGenome can help scientists "better understand genome function, the biology of diseases, and ultimately drive new biological discoveries and the development of new treatments." The results are published in Nature. 

The American Psychiatric Association has unveiled the new features of the forthcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in five articles published in The American Journal of Psychiatry. Among the highlights are the proposed change of name — it will become the Diagnostic and Scientific Manual — and the intention for it to be more dynamic, incorporating biomarkers for diagnosis and integrating the socioeconomic, cultural and environmental determinants of health. According to the authors, the aim is to enable a more personalised and inclusive clinical practice, aligned with scientific rigour. The most recent update was published in 2022 with the DSM-5-TR, and specialists are currently unaware of the date of the next edition, as they reported during a briefing with journalists.

A study based on models and data concludes that adverse health effects related to plastic emissions could more than double by 2040 if current practices do not change. The authors note that their model could not assess the potential impacts associated with many chemicals contained in plastics, nor with the microplastics and nanoplastics that form throughout their life cycle, due to a lack of data and “a serious lack of transparency regarding their composition.” The results are published in The Lancet Planetary Health. 

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist drugs, used to control obesity and type 2 diabetes, are associated with changes in food purchasing in favour of healthier options. This result, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, was obtained by analysing nearly two million shopping receipts from more than 1,100 participants in Denmark. Those who started treatment with GLP-1 drugs began to make purchases with fewer calories, sugars, saturated fats and carbohydrates, along with a modest increase in protein content. A decrease in the purchase of ultra-processed foods was also observed.

The use of ADHD medication increased ‘substantially’ in five European countries between 2010 and 2023 — including Spain — especially among adult women, according to a study funded by the European Medicines Agency. In Spain (based on data from the SIDIAP in Catalonia), the median age of people using these drugs during the study period was 14, similar to Germany and the United Kingdom, but younger than in Belgium (19) and the Netherlands (20). One-third of these people are women, and one-quarter had previously been prescribed antidepressants. The analysis is based on prescription data for five medicines and is published in The Lancet Regional Health Europe.