In 2024, 1.3 million people contracted HIV, 40.8 million were living with the virus, and 630,000 died from AIDS-related illnesses. These figures are in addition to the 92.3 million people in total who’ve been infected since the start of the pandemic, according to estimates. 

More than forty years have passed since the first cases were detected and, although steady progress has been made, we still can’t class HIV as a disease of the past.

So what have we learned after four decades of fighting HIV? What stigma does it carry today? Which scientific challenges remain to be solved? And what social transformations are essential to envisage an AIDS-free future?

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,

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,