Scientists

Research published in the journal Nature identifies the neurons that enabled nine paralysed patients to walk again after electrical stimulation of the spinal cord.

People with Down syndrome are at high risk of developing dementia very similar to that caused by Alzheimer's disease. A study published in the journal PNAS has found that in these people, as had been observed in "classic" Alzheimer's, the characteristic proteins of the disease have prion-like features.

Research published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine has modelled the impact of ultra-processed food consumption on premature and preventable deaths in Brazil in 2019. According to the research, increased intake of these foods was associated with more than 10% of premature deaths in Brazil in 2019, representing about 57,000 deaths.

Early this morning, the Spanish air navigation manager restricted a strip of airspace due to the possible passage of the Chinese space object CZ-5B, which had detached from the Long-March 5B rocket. The fragment finally fell over the Pacific Ocean and Spanish airspace is no longer restricted.

For the first time, the IceCube collaboration team has found evidence for high-energy neutrino emission from NGC 1068, an active galaxy 47 million light-years away with a supermassive black hole. The finding, made with the detector located under the Antarctic ice sheet, is published in the journal Science.

Research has tested a gene therapy method that targets overactive cells to treat epilepsy in mice. The results are published in the journal Science.

A panel of 386 academics, led by ISGlobal (Barcelona), has established a series of recommendations to end the threat of covid-19 following the Delphi method, a prospective technique based on the search for consensus among a group of experts. The results are published in the journal Nature.

A study has associated the consumption of a high-fat diet in pregnant primates with alterations in the development of immune cells in the bone marrow of the foetuses. The results are published in the journal Stem Cell Reports.

A phase 2 clinical trial has examined the use of the hallucinogen psilocybin in different amounts for the treatment of resistant depression. The results are published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

A study published today in Science Advances describes the case of a person who in less than 40 years of life has developed twelve tumours, five of them malignant, due to inherited mutations in a gene. The research reveals that his  immune system has naturally generated an altered inflammatory response that fights tumours. Understanding the mechanism will be useful to stimulate this type of response in other cases, according to the CNIO authors of the study.