University of Barcelona

This Friday, the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System approved the Comprehensive Plan for the Prevention and Control of Smoking (PIT). The document, which incorporates 147 proposals from the autonomous communities, has not achieved consensus among all of them.
 

10 % of people are left-handed, which occurs when the right cerebral hemisphere is more dominant for the control of that hand - whereas it is the left hemisphere in the case of right-handed people. To investigate the genetic basis of this laterality, scientists in the Netherlands have analysed genome data from 350,000 people in the UK biobank for rare genetic variants associated with this phenomenon. The heritability of left-handedness due to rare coding variants was low, at less than 1%. The research, published in Nature Communications, suggests that one gene - TUBB4B - is 2.7 times more likely to contain rare coding variants in left-handed people. 

Chimpanzees can learn a new skill by observing each other — a phenomenon known as social learning — according to a study published in Nature Human Behaviour. The findings suggest that chimpanzees may have the capacity for cumulative cultural evolution, which was previously considered to be an exclusively human trait.

Researchers have described five cases of people in the UK who developed Alzheimer's-like dementia after being treated as children with growth hormone from cadavers. The treatment was administered between 60 and 40 years ago. This suggests that the disease could be transmitted. However, the authors point out that this is a very rare occurrence and could have been caused by repeated exposure to a type of hormone that is no longer used. The results are published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Indicators of human longevity are on an upward trend in five groups of countries around the world, and the gap between women and men is narrowing, according to a study published in PLoS ONE. The gender gap in life expectancy resulting from the harmful effect of men's blue-collar jobs will shrink, but will persist in the future because men have a higher risk of certain diseases, the authors write. The research team, which includes scientists from the universities of Alcalá́, Barcelona, Oxford and London (UK), uses data and projections for 194 countries from 1990 to 2030.

Babies' brains specialise in their native language from pregnancy, according to a study carried out in France. The research team used encephalograms to measure the brain activity of 33 infants born to French-speaking mothers while listening to a story in French, English or Spanish. The results provide "the most compelling evidence to date that language experience already shapes the functional organization of the infant brain, even before birth," the authors write in Science Advances.

The absence of visits from friends and family is associated with a higher mortality rate, according to an analysis of data from more than 450,000 people followed for more than a decade in the UK. The study, published in BMC Medicine, focussed on five indicators of loneliness, and concluded that having no visits from family or friends was associated with higher all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease mortality. According to the authors, this kind of study helps to identify at-risk populations and measures of social connectedness that could provide the most benefit.

Researchers at Northwestern University in the United States have studied the effect of a temporary decrease in sleep on the mood of mice. According to their results, the animals became more hyperactive and hypersexual for a few hours. In addition, the occasional lack of sleep had an antidepressant effect that lasted for a few days and is explained by an increase in the release of dopamine. The results are published in the journal Neuron.

A US study measures the risk of breast cancer overdiagnosis in screening campaigns for women over 70. These are women who are misdiagnosed with cancer after a mammogram, leading to unnecessary treatments that can cause complications, anxiety and financial costs. The study includes more than 54,000 women over the age of 70 who have had a screening mammogram. The retrospective analysis compares the cumulative incidence of breast cancer between two groups: women who continued screening up to 15 years later, and women who did not. The research estimates that 31% of breast cancer cases in women aged 70-74 result from overdiagnosis: it finds 6.1 cases per 100 women who had continued screening, compared with 4.2 cases per 100 women in the second group. The percentage of overdiagnosis increases with the age of the women. The article is published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, along with an editorial.

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has declared the onset of El Niño conditions on Tuesday. "The declaration of El Niño by the WMO is the signal for governments around the world to mobilise preparations to limit the impacts on our health, our ecosystems and our economies," said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. According to the WMO statement, El Niño conditions have developed in the tropical Pacific for the first time in seven years, setting the stage for a likely rise in global temperatures and altered weather and climate patterns.