Institut de Recerca Sant Pau - Centre CERCA
Despite advances in biomedical research, women’s health remains underrepresented in many areas of innovation and clinical practice, with gaps in diagnosis, treatment, and knowledge generation. To address this challenge, the XWHIN (Women’s Health Innovation Network) was created, led by the Institut de Recerca Sant Pau (IR Sant Pau). On April 24, it held its first public working session at the Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site as part of the scientific meeting “Entre Dones,” with the participation of more than 80 professionals. This participatory event on women’s health, organized by Hospital de Sant Pau, provided a space to discuss, share, and learn about women’s health from a gender perspective.
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.
