Journalists

A review published in The Lancet Psychiatry has examined the prevalence of major depressive disorder during pregnancy, the peripartum period—immediately before and after childbirth—and the postpartum period—up to twelve months after childbirth. The study, which used data from more than two million women and girls aged 10 to 59 from all regions of the world, showed that approximately one in 15 (6.8%) is affected by major depression during the year following childbirth and that the prevalence was highest during the first two weeks after childbirth (8.3%). The authors call for greater integration of screening, prevention, and treatment of this disorder during the peripartum period into current care models.

A Danish clinical trial involving 108 adults with obesity who were seeking treatment for alcohol use found that a weekly injection of semaglutide reduced the number of heavy drinking days. This decrease averaged about 12 days—50% greater than the eight-day reduction observed in the placebo group. The study is published in The Lancet and was funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the company that develops these drugs.

Given current vaccination and cervical cancer screening campaigns, high-income countries could eliminate this disease by around 2048, according to a study published in The Lancet. However, the incidence of this cancer in low- and middle-income countries would decline by only 23% over this period if current trends continue, the article states. Elimination is defined as an incidence of fewer than four cases per 100,000 women.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in medical diagnosis centres on computing and data processing. Research published in Science assesses the diagnostic capabilities of an advanced large language model, which managed to match or outperform human professionals. The team carried out six experiments involving both standardised clinical cases and a study using real cases from emergency department records, using the performance of hundreds of doctors as a benchmark. The AI proved particularly useful in situations of uncertainty, such as the initial stages of triage in the emergency department. However, the authors highlight that the model only processed text, whereas clinical practice also relies on visual and auditory cues.

Craig Venter, the American biologist and entrepreneur who founded Celera Genomics to launch his own Human Genome Project in 1999 outside the public consortium, died Wednesday in San Diego at the age of 79, according to a statement from the J. Craig Venter Institute, which he led. Among other achievements, Venter completed the first full sequencing of a living organism’s genetic material and announced that he had succeeded in creating synthetic life.

Autism spectrum disorders are often accompanied by social communication difficulties, which are treated through behavioral interventions. A type of transcranial magnetic stimulation, accelerated continuous theta-burst stimulation, has demonstrated efficacy and safety in improving this aspect in a clinical trial published in the BMJ. The trial included 200 children from China (167 boys and 33 girls) aged 4 to 10 with autism spectrum disorder, half of whom had intellectual disabilities. One group of participants received 10 daily sessions targeting the motor cortex over five consecutive days, while the other group received sham sessions. The treated group showed greater improvements in both social communication and language skills for one month following treatment.

The accelerated extraction of critical minerals such as lithium and cobalt is causing water insecurity and health risks, according to a report by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), which refers to them as the “oil of the 21st century.” The high water consumption of mining operations limits access to water for other purposes such as agriculture, fishing, and human consumption. Furthermore, data from various regions in South Africa, Bolivia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo reveal “widespread heavy metal contamination and exposure to toxic waste,” the report states. This leads to health problems including fetal malformations and chronic diseases, which disproportionately affect women and children.

Rapid warming in Europe is reducing snow and ice cover, while very high air temperatures, drought, heatwaves, and record ocean temperatures are affecting regions from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. These are the main findings of the State of the Climate in Europe (ESOTC) 2025 report, prepared by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which operates the Copernicus Climate Change Service, and by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The data show that 95% of the continent recorded above-average annual temperatures last year, and river flows were below average for 11 months.

A new study, based on oceanographic data collected by ships and robotic floating buoys over several decades, provides the first evidence that a warm mass of deep circumpolar water is approaching Antarctica, threatening the fragile ice shelves that border it from below. This warming in the Southern Ocean has implications not only for Antarctic ice melt and sea-level rise, but also for global heat regulation, carbon storage and the global climate system. The study is published in Communications Earth & Environment.

Using Ireland as a case study, a new article published in the *Journal of Behavioral Addictions* has analyzed gambling advertisements, taking into account segmentation by gender and age group, as well as the actual reach of the ads. The team included 411 ads from 88 operators that ran between January and February 2025. The data was extracted from the Meta Ad Library, a database of advertising on Meta-owned platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. The total number of ads reached 2.3 times more men than women, and the most exposed age group was 25 to 34 years old. Twenty-two percent of the ads targeted men exclusively; none were aimed solely at women.