Journalists

Mercury concentrations in tuna have remained stable between 1971 and 2022, even though emissions of this metal from human activities have decreased over the same period, a study says. 'Aggressive' emission reduction targets are needed to achieve measurable declines in concentrations of this pollutant, which is toxic for human health, the authors write in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters. The Minimata Convention on Mercury, a global treaty that entered into force in 2017, bans new mercury mines and includes provision to reduce mercury use, but mercury has already accumulated in the ocean 'for centuries', the article says.

At an informative meeting organized by the Science Media Centre Spain, the coauthor of a paper published this week in the journal Cell discussed his findings with journalists. Although the study was conducted with mice, he is confident in being able to analyze human eggs to see if his conclusions could explain the loss of fertility that occurs in women with age.

A team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany has analysed nearly 10,000 ancient genomes and found six cases of people with Down's syndrome and one with Edwards' syndrome. Most of them died before or shortly after birth. The findings correspond to different periods up to 5,500 years old and several of them have been found in Navarra. According to the authors, "the care with which the burials were carried out and the objects found with these individuals indicate that ancient societies probably treated people with trisomies 18 and 21 as members of their communities". The findings are published in Nature Communications.

An international team, led by a Spanish group, has published the mechanism that allows immature egg reserves (oocytes) to survive for many years, up to almost half a century in the case of humans. The research studies how oocytes are affected by protein aggregates similar to those that damage other cells such as neurons and can cause neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease. The finding of how these egg reserves are kept healthy may help to understand some causes of infertility. The results are published in the journal Cell.

This week, Spain’s Ministry of Health launched a process to develop a Royal Decree on the medical use of cannabis, assuring that it will be "a rigorous measure based on the best scientific evidence available.” The goverment is conducting a public consultation until 4 March to gather the opinions of citizens, civil society organisations, professional associations and scientific societies. In this explainer, we attempt to answer the main questions that arise regarding the medical use of cannabis. 

Cresomycin, a new synthetic molecule, exhibits robust efficacy against multiple evolutionarily divergent forms of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), according to a study published today in Science. By structurally analyzing how antibiotics bind to ribosomes of various bacterial species, researchers developed a new antibiotic molecule that adopts the exact conformation necessary for ribosomal binding.

Dressing in school uniform is associated with less physical activity in children, especially primary school girls, according to a study by the University of Cambridge (UK) published in the Journal of Sport and Health Science. The study analysed data on the physical activity levels of more than one million children aged 5-17 in 135 countries, including Spain, combined with an online survey.

E-cigarettes combined with traditional therapies are more effective for smoking cessation than regular therapies alone, says a study conducted in Switzerland and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study involved two groups of about 600 participants each. At a 6-month control visit, 59.6% of the members of the e-cigarette group had not smoked tobacco in the previous week, compared to 38.5% in the control group.

A multidisciplinary study involving several Spanish research groups has preclinically tested a new type of immunotherapy for multiple myeloma. Instead of modifying T cells to attack the tumour directly, as CAR-T cells do, they have managed to make them secrete bispecific antibodies, which bind to the tumour on one side and to other T cells on the other, attracting them to the tumour. According to the authors, this cell therapy was more effective than traditional CAR-Ts and could generate less resistance. The results are published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. 

A team of researchers has demonstrated how a non-invasive ultrasound technique can increase the movement of human sperm in the laboratory by up to 266%. Using microfluidic droplets to evaluate individual sperm cells, which had not been done before, they found that ultrasound exposure induced movement in immobile sperm and improved swimming speeds in mobile ones. The work is published today in the journal Science Advances.