The discovery of insulin in 1921 radically transformed diabetes from a fatal disease to a condition that’s chronic and complex but manageable. Today, a hundred years after that discovery, insulin is still the standard treatment. 

Despite huge technological advances such as smart insulin pumps, glucose sensors and control algorithms, the therapeutic principle has remained the same: to replace a hormone the body can no longer produce or use properly. And although insulin saves lives, it’s still a stopgap: it doesn’t cure the disease or prevent the associated long-term complications.

On World Diabetes Day, we explore new lines of research that seek to go one step further: to release patients from their dependence on chronic treatments,

In art, what we see at first glance rarely tells the whole story. Looking beyond the obvious helps to reveal hidden details and creates unique interpretations and perspectives that can change our conception of a work.

The same is true in science. Until recently, cancer research tended to focus on the tumour: its shape, the weak points in the tumour’s cells… But now we know that, beyond the tumour itself, understanding its environment and how it interacts with other cells can alter how we study it and steer the design of new therapies.

In this latest Snapshot of the month we’ll discover, together with Alice Perucca from the group led by the CaixaResearch Health researcher Xavier Trepat at the IBEC and the artist and ”la Caixa” Foundation fellow Max Azemar i Carnicero,

45% of people will experience a mental health issue at some point in their lives. In fact, mental disorders are now the leading cause of disability worldwide in all age groups, surpassing any other health problem in terms of impact.

Anxiety, depression, addiction, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are just a few examples of conditions which, despite their prevalence, are still affected by stigma and barriers to their diagnosis and treatment.

For decades, the debate around mental health has oscillated between two poles: those who prioritise biological factors and those who emphasise social determinants. However, the latest research shows that this dichotomy is artificial, hindering progress in truly understanding these disorders.

Sadness, brain fog, pain during sexual intercourse, loss of memory, bone mass and libido, incontinence, migraines, hot flushes, the risk of heart attack and insomnia. 

These aren’t the potential side effects of an aggressive treatment but rather the symptoms of menopause: a stage that all women go through (and many will spend a third of their lives in) but about which we know very little, both medically and socially. 

According to a review published in the journal Cell, 85% of women going through menopause are not receiving any effective, regulator-approved treatment. Fortunately, this gap, in both resources and care, is beginning to be filled.

Sometimes, all we need to do is change our angle of perspective to realise that what had previously appeared to be splashes of colour, spontaneous shapes and lines that lead nowhere are, in fact, a message.

And that’s the case of this latest CaixaResearch Snapshot. It could be a contemporary work of art with an artificial, abstract, almost random texture. But what you can see here goes beyond art. It’s a scientific image that contains an important discovery, namely confirmation that our brain and gut communicate directly and in both directions. 

To analyse this image from two different but complementary perspectives, we asked Marc Claret,