The rate of death by suicide in Spain has increased between 2018 and 2021, according to a report presented today by the Complutense University of Madrid, the Centre for Biomedical Research in Mental Health Network (CIBERSAM) and the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona, which points to the influence of the pandemic in this increase. In 2021, a total of 4,003 people died from this cause, 5.5% more than in 2018. During the pandemic, mortality by suicide was greater among people living in large cities and provincial capitals. The report, which includes data from 2000 to 2021, also shows the increase in deaths by suicide that occurred during the period of the economic crisis, from 2008 to 2014.

A study published in the journal PLOS Medicine concludes that the development and academic outcomes of girls and boys conceived with in vitro fertilisation (IVF) are no different from those of children conceived naturally. The analysis is based on data from two national assessments in Australia, including more than 585,000 children born between 2005 and 2014 (more than 11,000 conceived by IVF). The first assessment measured the physical and emotional and cognitive health of children aged 4-6 years; the second focused on the numeracy and verbal skills of schoolchildren aged 7-9 years.

A Swedish study has found an association between lack of sleep or poor quality sleep during adolescence and an increased risk of developing multiple sclerosis later in life. They put the relative increased risk at 40 %. The results are published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

Research concludes that different types of antidepressants are capable of generating resistance to multiple antibiotics, even when administered for short periods of time. The results are published in the journal PNAS.

Approved therapies to treat various tumours using CAR-T cells are based on the modification of the patient's own lymphocytes in the laboratory, which delays their administration. A phase 1 clinical trial has used ready-made donor cells to treat patients with multiple myeloma. The results are published in the journal Nature Medicine.

In January 2013, two laboratories demonstrated that CRISPR tools could be used to edit genes in human cells. Ten years later, the first patients are already benefiting from the molecular scissors to overcome incurable diseases. This week in Science, one of the pioneers of CRISPR, Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna, summarises the history of these tools, without forgetting that it all began thirty years ago with the findings of Francis Mojica in the Santa Pola salt flats.

The brightness of the night sky has increased by 7 to 10 % per year (depending on the region of the world) in the range visible to the human eye, according to an analysis based on 51,000 observations made with the naked eye by citizen scientists between 2011 and 2022. According to the research, published in Science, this increase is faster than what can be observed with satellites; satellites cannot detect blue emissions from LED lights, which are increasingly used in street lighting.

A study to be published in the journal Actas Dermo-Sifiliográficas analyses an outbreak of ringworm that has affected hundreds of Spanish adolescents in the last two years.

A study published in NEJM that followed a cohort of more than 300 transgender and non-binary youth, aged 12-20, for two years concluded that hormone therapy led to improvements in their symptoms of depression and anxiety.

An international team including researchers from Spain has analysed the level of exchange of microbial strains between different generations (vertical transmission) and between people who share a household or are close contacts (horizontal transmission). The analysis, published in the journal Nature, is based on about 9,700 microbiome samples from the faeces and saliva of people with different lifestyles from countries. According to the research, the transmission of bacteria is more frequent for the mouth microbiome than for the gut microbiome among people living together.