When science hits the headlines, we seek the views of expert sources who assess the news rigorously and quickly, according to the available evidence.
A review published today in The Journal of Headache and Pain concludes that 52% of the population is affected by a headache each year, with 14% reporting migraines.
A paper published today in the journal Circulation concludes that acute myocarditis is a rare complication in patients hospitalised with covid-19 and that the severity of its prognosis depends on the simultaneous presence of pneumonia.
A study published in the BMJ concludes that covid-19 is a risk factor for developing venous thrombosis, pulmonary embolism and haemorrhage.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) consider it too early for the general population to receive a fourth dose of covid-19 mRNA vaccines. Both agencies do agree that people over 80 years of age should receive it because of their increased risk of severe disease.
The Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, today announced that face masks will no longer be compulsory indoors after Easter. The measure will come into force on 20 April. It will continue to be compulsory in public transport, health centres and residences, but the final details of the new scenario are not yet known.
A study of more than 630 billion words (mostly in English) used on 3 billion web pages concludes that the term 'people' is not gender-neutral: its meaning is biased towards the concept 'men'. The authors write in Science Advances that they see this as "a fundamental bias in the collective view of our species", relevant because the concept 'people' is "in almost all societal decisions and policies".
The UK Health Security Agency published in its latest report on 25 March the detection of three recombinant forms of omicron, called XE, XD and XF. The WHO mentions them in its 29 March report, noting that the possibility that XE is more transmissible than BA.2 still requires further study.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just approved the study on measures to curb the climate crisis on which more than 200 authors from around the world have been working for three years. It is the report of Working Group III and is the final component of the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report.
Two studies published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases confirm that covid-19 vaccines offer additional protection for those already infected with SARS-CoV-2, especially against severe disease.
Storm surges, one-off events associated with storms that can cause flooding, are rare and highly destructive phenomena. A paper published this week in Nature finds that they have increased since 1960, comparable to the increase in average sea level rise over the same period.
The authors, led by Spaniard Francisco Calafat of the National Oceanography Centre in Liverpool, UK, statistically analyse observations of extreme tides from 79 tide gauges on European coasts over the period 1960-2018, and compare them with climate models.
Their results point to an increase in extreme sea levels in the future, something the authors say has implications for coastal planning. So far, the most widely accepted hypothesis is that the frequency of such extreme storm surges would not increase.