Institut de Recerca Sant Pau - Centre CERCA
Despite advances in cardiology, women continue to face significant disparities in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of ischemic heart disease—a condition caused by reduced blood flow to cardiac tissue and the leading cause of cardiovascular death worldwide. A study published in the European Heart Journal as a scientific position paper from the “Working Group on Coronary Pathophysiology and Microcirculation” and associations (ACVC and EAPCI) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) highlights how sex and gender differences play a decisive role in cardiovascular risk, pathophysiology, and prognosis in ischemic heart disease. It underscores the need to systematically integrate this perspective into clinical practice and research.
What has long been interpreted as permanent and irreversible vascular damage may not be exclusively so. In people with Down syndrome—one of the most robust populations for studying Alzheimer’s disease due to the near-universal presence of the characteristic proteinopathies of this dementia from the age of 40—some lesions visible on magnetic resonance imaging do not follow a linear course. A longitudinal study from the Institut de Recerca Sant Pau (IR Sant Pau), published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, shows that these alterations can fluctuate and even decrease over time in the Down syndrome population. This is especially true once the clinical symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease have begun to manifest.
A new international methodological guideline from the GRADE group (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation) has updated the criteria for developing and using so-called good practice statements in clinical practice and public health guidelines. The document, published as a special article in Annals of Internal Medicine, one of the most influential medical journals worldwide, seeks to avoid the inappropriate or excessive use of this type of statement and improve its justification, transparency, and credibility.
Reducing chemotherapy toxicity without compromising efficacy remains one of the major challenges in oncology. A research team from the Institut de Recerca Sant Pau (IR Sant Pau) has shown in a study published in Materials Today Bio that a more precise design strategy in nanomedicine can maintain—and even improve—the antitumor effect while using much smaller amounts of drug.
Preeclampsia is a pregnancy complication widely known for its immediate impact on maternal and fetal health. However, scientific evidence accumulated recently has shown that preeclampsia is also associated with an increased long-term cardiovascular risk in women who have experienced it. Despite this, the mechanisms underlying this elevated risk remain incompletely defined. Two recent studies conducted by the Perinatal and Women’s Medicine Research Group at the Institut de Recerca Sant Pau (IR Sant Pau) analyze how preeclampsia and angiogenic imbalance during pregnancy are linked to persistent changes in the female cardiovascular and renal systems several years after childbirth.
