The neurologist Josep Dalmau is one of the world's most authoritative voices in neuro-oncology, the science that treats and studies tumors affecting the nervous system. The head of the Autoimmune Neuronal Diseases Pathogenesis group at IDIBAPS and researcher at the new CaixaResearch Institute received the Gregorio Marañón National Research Award for Medicine in 2025. Recently, the Conchita Rábago de Jiménez Díaz Foundation also honored him for his decisive contribution to the knowledge of autoimmune encephalitis, a group of brain diseases that for decades had no diagnosis or treatment.

It has been more than four years since the death of Munir and Jéssica in the shantytown of Montcada i Reixac. In this time, however, the situation of the settlement has not changed at all and its inhabitants continue to live in poverty between the Besòs river and the BV-5001 road, invisible to the administrations despite the tragedy. That day in January 2022 it was cold, the couple lit a fire to warm themselves and died of asphyxiation inside their makeshift home, leaving three children orphaned. The arrival of a new summer does not improve the neighbors' outlook, as with the rising temperatures they have to seek refuge outside the shack—built with sheet metal or materials not very resistant—when the sun beats down the hardest and makes the air inside unbreathable. This is the case of a man resting in the shade without a shirt. He does not want to give his name, nor have his photograph taken and be interviewed, he is tired of reporting the situation and angry about the lack of help they have received: "They died right next door and everything remains the same; I don't want to talk to you because it will be useless".

Last week, Petit tasted marijuana and benzodiazepines for the first time, and he did so against his will. He is a nine-year-old Majorcan terrier, very energetic and affectionate, who has lived with Manel and his family since his previous owner died. As he is always on the go and a restless soul, the family became worried when they saw him looking pale and drowsy after his walk. The sign that set off all the alarms was that he urinated himself. Manel didn't want to wait any longer and took him to the emergency room, where, to his surprise, they immediately suspected drug intoxication.

Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of premature birth and, when born, newborns exposed to nicotine are more likely to suffer respiratory problems and delays in cognitive development, among other complications. In severe cases, there may even be a miscarriage or sudden infant death. Although the adverse effects are widely known, half of women who smoke do not quit when they become pregnant, according to data from the Survey of Health of Catalonia (ESCA), published this Wednesday by the Department of Health.

Kevin will turn 12 in July, but he looks older when he speaks clearly about the illness he has been suffering from for a few months. Last February, he was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a rare condition in which red bone marrow disappears and red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets stop being produced. He needs a bone marrow transplant. So far, no donor has been found, and the little one has started treatment at Vall d'Hebron Hospital, although it will still take a few weeks to see how he responds.

Although there is no cure yet, science is tightening the siege on neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis, and there are increasingly more and better diagnostic tools and new treatments that slow their progression. This Friday, the prestigious journal The Lancet published two investigations on new techniques that allow detecting Alzheimer's, which is the most common form of dementia, long before the first symptoms appear. They are a simple blood test, which has been shown in other studies to be a great tool for early diagnosis and is already used in hospitals, and a new brain scanner that improves the results of the technique currently used in the United States and Europe. The sooner the disease is identified, the sooner strategies can be deployed to delay its course, which is why it is essential to have early diagnosis tools.

New scientific milestone for Barcelona, which continues to take steps to consolidate itself as one of the European capitals of knowledge, research and innovation. This Thursday, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS) has officially presented its third quantum computer, the EuroQCS-Spain, which with a cost of 9.8 million euros makes the institution one of the few centers in the world that combine supercomputing and quantum technology. "It is the only one with three quantum computers connected to a classic supercomputer," claimed the director of the BSC, Mateo Valero, during the presentation of the new technology, which has been co-financed by the European Commission and the Spanish government.

Menopause is a stage in all women's lives, with over a billion expected to be postmenopausal next year, according to the American Menopause Society. With the end of menstruation, the ovaries stop producing essential hormones, such as estrogen and progesterone, leading to physiological and hormonal changes that until a few years ago were associated with the onset of old age. Some of these symptoms, such as hot flashes, are widely known, but there are others that are not usually associated with menopause and that many women also experience. To enter this new stage in the best way and with good health, it is necessary to make lifestyle changes, such as incorporating physical exercise and following a good diet, and even consulting with experts about whether hormone replacement therapy is necessary.

A disease detected simultaneously in Barcelona, Lyon, and Berlin could be emerging as a new sexually transmitted infection (STI). This is the conclusion reached by professionals at Vall d'Hebron Hospital after diagnosing a dozen cases of dermatophilosis in recent months, a rare skin infection in humans caused by bacteria associated with animals, especially livestock such as horses, goats, and cows. This time, however, professionals believe that transmission has been from person to person through sexual contact, far from the animals that generally cause contagion and the tropical areas where this disease is more frequent.

Nearly 1.2 billion people worldwide live with a mental disorder, almost double the figure recorded in 1990. This is a blatant increase that places them as the leading cause of disability ahead of cardiovascular diseases and cancer, and they already account for one in six cases, according to a study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and the University of Queensland. The research findings are published in the journal The Lancet and indicate that they disproportionately affect adolescents between 15 and 19 years old and women. "These upward trends may reflect both the lingering effects of pandemic-related stress and long-term structural drivers, such as poverty, insecurity, abuse, violence, and declining social connectivity," explains Damian Santomauro, an associate professor at the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research.

La Sagrada Família is already warming up its engines for the arrival of Pope Leo XIV with only 20 days left until his visit to the Catalan capital. It will be one of the highlights of Gaudí Year, which commemorates the centenary of the architect's death throughout this 2026. The Pope will officiate a Mass in his memory inside the temple and will then go outside to bless the tower of Jesus Christ, which at the beginning of the year was crowned with the cross that has made it the tallest religious building in Europe, with a height of 172.5 meters. Given the great expectation to attend the Eucharist, the general director of the Sagrada Família Construction Board, Xavier Martínez, has specified that there will be 4,000 people inside the temple and 4,000 more outside who will be able to experience live the ceremony officiated by the Pope.

It is not the same to receive a cancer diagnosis now as it was three decades ago. Patients' prognosis is radically better and so is their quality of life. Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, on the other hand, are almost the same as 30 years ago: neurodegenerative diseases are unfortunately still irreversible and have no available cure. However, the appearance of the first approved drugs against Alzheimer's, which are reluctant to arrive in Spain, are disease modifiers, they delay its progression and are the first step towards a paradigm shift, as patients have had no therapy available until now. New and better diagnostic tools have also been developed, capable of anticipating symptoms and their evolution. This encourages professionals at the start of a revolution against these diseases, which have enough parallels to consider joint strategies in the future.

Just 24 hours after the Spanish government and the World Health Organization (WHO) congratulated each other on the management of the hantavirus outbreak, the provisional toll of this disease is 10 confirmed cases, three deaths, and dozens of people in isolation in different countries in case they develop symptoms. In Spain there is one positive case, which remains stable, while the rest of the Spanish passengers on the cruise ship MV Hondius and those who briefly coincided with an infected woman on a plane from Johannesburg – one at the Hospital Clínico in Barcelona and another in Alicante – have tested negative in all the tests performed. In France, the situation is almost identical, but the only woman who has tested positive is hospitalized in an intensive care unit (ICU) in serious condition, and the professionals attending her are working to improve her prognosis. One of the challenges of this disease is that there is no treatment or vaccine available.

One of the fourteen Spanish passengers on the cruise ship MV Hondius isolated at the Gómez Ulla Hospital has provisionally tested positive for hantavirus in the PCR test performed when the group entered this military center in Madrid to undergo quarantine. The other thirteen cruise ship passengers, on the other hand, have tested negative and will undergo a second test within seven days. The positive passenger is a man who, according to the Ministry of Health, is in good health and shows no symptoms. Following protocol, biological samples will be re-analyzed in the coming hours, and if the same result is repeated, he will be transferred to the High-Level Isolation and Treatment Unit (Uatan) of the same hospital, with stricter and more specific conditions for treating infectious diseases. The rest of the passengers will continue in individual rooms. The medical news coincided with the completion of the ship's evacuation operation and the repatriation of all passengers, except for about twenty crew members who have set sail for the port of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. "Mission accomplished," said the Minister of Health, Mónica García, in a press conference from the port of Granadilla, in Tenerife, where only disinfection of the facilities remains.

As happened six years ago due to the covid-19 pandemic, the hantavirus outbreak has shown that zoonoses, diseases transmitted between animals but with the potential to infect humans, are one of the great threats of the present and future for the health of the population. Although there are some parallels between the current escalation of infections and the covid-19 crisis —mainly the animal origin of the virus—, experts insist that the current situation is very different and assure that hantavirus does not have the capacity to cause a upheaval of the magnitude that coronavirus caused. It is much less contagious and, therefore, it is more unlikely to spread. However, they acknowledge that the growth of global mobility, the rise of extreme climate phenomena and rising temperatures will make the appearance of these types of diseases increasingly frequent.

In the last decade, at least 405 sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have been detected in children under 14 years old in Catalonia. Although they are a growing public health problem throughout Europe, the increase in cases in the younger age groups particularly worries health authorities, which is why the Department of Health has announced that it is extending surveillance of these infections to 12-year-olds. Promotion and prevention among adolescents will also be strengthened, and there will be clinical referents for these infections in primary care teams. These are some of the measures in the new STI care model, with which the aim is to reduce the number of cases, as since 2010 they have increased by an average of 32.4% each year and, for the first time in Catalonia, more than 40,000 were diagnosed in 2024, the last year with available data.

While the hantavirus-affected cruise ship is already heading towards the Canary Islands, the unknowns about the origin of the outbreak remain open. The World Health Organization (WHO) has downplayed the possibility that the infection was caused by the presence of rodents on board the vessel, so the most probable hypothesis at this point is that the first two fatalities, a Dutch couple, had contracted the virus before boarding the ship and that, once there, they had infected other passengers. Argentina, from where the cruise ship departed, has reconstructed the journey of the man and woman before embarking on the sea voyage. In the last four months, they had been in a large part of this country, but also in Chile and Uruguay, on a bird-watching trip. The strain responsible for the outbreak is native to the Andes and circulates in some of the areas where the couple had been.

The luxury cruise ship MV Hondius is sailing towards the Canary Islands after being immobilized for a few days off the coast of Cape Verde due to a hantavirus outbreak that has caused three deaths and at least eight positive cases among the 147 people on board. In total, there are thirteen passengers and one crew member of Spanish nationality, of whom five reside in Catalonia. Health authorities are finalizing the care circuits for individuals once they disembark, but the Department of Health has already indicated that it is most likely that Catalans will undergo home isolation once they return home, provided they continue to be asymptomatic as they have been so far.

It is a little-known virus to the public, it is transmitted mainly through rodents and has 147 people paralyzed on a luxury cruise ship off the coast of Cape Verde. The outbreak of hantavirus at sea, which has caused three deaths and at least seven positive cases among passengers on the Dutch ship, has awakened the ghosts of the 2020 pandemic due to some of these parallels with the COVID-19 crisis. However, experts are adamant: human-to-human infection is possible, but the virus is not contagious enough. "It has no pandemic potential," states Fernando Salvador, a specialist from the infectious diseases service at the Vall d'Hebron Hospital, who clarifies that the pathogen has been known for a long time and outbreaks like this occur occasionally, but most cases are usually sporadic and without risk of explosive spread.

When Carmen Boer is asked about her health, she responds with a long, ironic "Oof..." before quickly reviewing her list of ailments. This year she will turn 91, she has overcome two cancers – one breast and one colon – she has heart failure, chronic bronchitis, and an incurable kidney disease. Every day she takes a dozen medications. "Ten or eleven," she says with a smile, without specifying. Last year she went to the emergency room six times due to decompensation, and on three occasions, she had to be hospitalized. However, since she became part of a program for complex chronic patients at Vall d'Hebron Hospital, she has not returned to the emergency room or required any admission.