Gambling companies are reaching young men – the group most likely to exhibit problem gambling behaviour – on social media at more than double the rate of women, a study has found. Researchers led by the University of Cambridge analysed 411 advertisements from 88 licensed gambling operators in Ireland and found that young men were reached 2.3 times more than women across Meta platforms including Facebook and Instagram, even if the ads were not directly targeting men. The age group most exposed to gambling advertising was 25 to 34-year-olds, who accounted for over a third of all unique accounts reached, a total of more than 6.2 million impressions. The results are reported in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions. The researchers used the Meta Ad Library to conduct the study. Under the EU Digital Services Act, Meta and other online service providers must publish all advertising shown on their platforms in EU countries and provide demographic data about who saw them. The findings are published as new gambling legislation has come into effect in Ireland, banning most social media gambling advertising unless users actively opt in to see it. However, gambling advertising is still widespread in the UK and most other European countries, and has exploded in popularity in the US driven by prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi. “Not that many adverts directly targeted men to begin with. But even when adverts were set to reach all genders, they still reached that very vulnerable group of young men,” said lead author Dr Elena Petrovskaya from Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology. “It shows that if companies just put ads on social media, they are still reaching young men - the group we know from other research is most at risk of gambling harms.” Previous research has shown that exposure to gambling advertising is linked to positive gambling-related attitudes, intentions and behaviours. Studies have also suggested a ‘dose response’ effect, where more exposure to advertising increases gambling participation, leading to an increased risk of harm. In Ireland, men aged 25-34 have the highest rate of problem gambling, with 1.3% of this age group showing this behaviour. Just 0.2% of women in the same age group show similar problem gambling behaviour. The Cambridge-led study found that a single advert from Betfair reached more than 1.32 million unique accounts – equivalent to 26% of the Irish population. The analysis found that 91 adverts (22%) targeted men only, and no adverts targeted only women. Across all 411 adverts, 12.6 million men were reached, compared to 5.4 million women. In total, adverts targeting some part of the age group 25-44 reached 59.4% of all accounts reached. “Even in a country like Ireland with a small population, the number of accounts these ads reached was dizzying,” said Petrovskaya. “We looked at Ireland as a case study of an environment where a modern gambling regulatory framework had not yet been adopted.” The Gambling Regulation Act 2024 came into force in Ireland in March 2025, establishing the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland. The Act also provides for introduction of a watershed for broadcast advertising. Once the provisions concerning advertising begin, gambling advertising on social media will be restricted to users who follow a licensed gambling operator. “This research provides valuable insights that establish a baseline for the reach of gambling advertising on social media in Ireland before the introduction of a regulatory framework,” said co-author Dr Deirdre Leahy from MTU in Cork. “This baseline will be essential for assessing the impact of reforms under the Gambling Regulation Act.” The researchers say their methodology using the Meta Ad Library could be applied to other countries where gambling advertising remains lightly regulated, such as in the UK and Australia. They are calling for wider adoption of laws such as the EU Digital Service Act to provide transparency and accountability for advertising by harmful industries. Reference: Elena Petrovskaya et al. ‘Gambling adverts on social media reach 2.3 times more men than women: using the Meta Ad Library to assess gambling advertising in Ireland.’ Journal of Behavioral Addictions (2026). DOI: 10.1556/2006.2025.00484 The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

A decades-long study of oceanographic data provides the first evidence that deep-ocean heat has moved closer to Antarctica, threatening the fragile ice shelves that fringe the continent. The study, led by the University of Cambridge with collaborators from the University of California and published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, compiled long-term ocean measurements collected by ships and robotic floating devices to show that a warm mass called circumpolar deep water has expanded and shifted toward the Antarctic continental shelf over the past 20 years. Previously, scientists hadn’t had enough ocean observations to detect the warming trend. “It’s concerning because this warm water can flow beneath Antarctic ice shelves, melting them from below and destabilising them,” said Joshua Lanham, lead author of the study from Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences. Ice shelves play an important role in holding back Antarctica’s inland ice sheets and glaciers, which collectively hold enough freshwater to raise sea level by about 58 metres. It’s the first time that scientists have observed the shift in deep-ocean heat throughout the Southern Ocean, said Lanham. “It’s something that had been predicted by climate models due to global warming, but we hadn’t seen it in data.” Previous observations of the Southern Ocean, which encircles Antarctica, were limited to transects recorded by ships roughly once a decade. This information, collected as part of a long-running international programme, provided detailed snapshots of temperature, salinity and nutrients throughout the water column, but without continuous data, scientists were more uncertain about long-term changes in heat distribution. To fill the gaps in the record, the researchers, including scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UCLA, supplemented the ship measurements with publicly available data collected by a global array of autonomous floats, which drift through the upper ocean. These so-called Argo floats provide continuous snapshots of the ocean, but the programme hasn’t been running as long as ships have been collecting detailed hydrographic sections. Using machine learning, the researchers combined the Argo float data with long-term patterns drawn from ships' measurements to build a new record capturing detailed monthly snapshots over the last four decades, allowing them to uncover the shift in warm waters. “In the past, the ice sheets were protected by a bath of cold water, preventing them from melting. Now it looks like the ocean’s circulation has changed, and it’s almost like someone turned on the hot tap and now the bath is getting warmer!” said Professor Sarah Purkey, one of the senior authors of the study from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. It makes sense that this pool of warm water is expanding, said Purkey. More than 90 percent of excess heat from global warming is stored in the ocean, with the Southern Ocean absorbing most of the anthropogenic heat. The findings not only have implications for Antarctic ice melt and sea level rise, said Professor Ali Mashayek, one of the senior authors of the study from Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences. “The Southern Ocean plays a key role in regulating global heat and carbon storage, so changes in heat distribution here have wider implications for the global climate system.” In the frigid waters around the poles, extremely cold, dense water forms and sinks to the deep ocean. As the water sinks, it draws down heat, carbon and nutrients, setting in motion a global ‘conveyor belt’ of currents, including the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which shuttles water around the Atlantic. Climate models, including those used by the IPCC, indicate that warmer air temperatures and added freshwater from ice melt are reducing the formation of this dense water in the North Atlantic, potentially leading to a weakening of the AMOC. Similar changes have recently been forecast for the Southern Ocean. Climate models have suggested that production of cold, dense water will decline in Antarctica, causing the warmer circumpolar deep water to draw toward the continent to occupy the space left by the shrinking cold water. “We can now see this scenario is already emerging in the observations,” said Lanham. “This isn’t just a possible future scenario suggested by models; it’s something that is happening now, bringing wider implications for how carbon, nutrients and heat are cycled through the global ocean.” Reference: Joshua Lanham et al. ‘Poleward migration of warm Circumpolar Deep Water towards Antarctica.’ Communications Earth & Environment (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-026-03426-x The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

A University of Cambridge study has found that stresses such as systemic racism and socioeconomic disadvantage may sensitise key processes in the body during pregnancy, helping to explain why black women and their babies face significantly higher rates of complication than white women. I was surprised that although this disparity had been known for a long time, there was little research into the potential underlying physiological reasons. Grace Amedor These altered physiological processes may lead to higher rates of preeclampsia in black women, and higher rates of preterm birth and fetal growth restriction in black babies, compared to white women and their babies. In a major review of published studies, the researchers looked at a range of processes that are vital in the body during pregnancy - including the control of inflammation, and blood flow to the developing fetus. They found these processes are often altered in ways linked to poorer pregnancy outcomes in black women, compared to white women. These are not the result of genetic differences between black and white women. Instead, the results suggest that persistent socio-environmental stressors - known to have a measurable biological effect - may influence the body’s ability to function healthily during pregnancy. Black women and their babies face significantly higher health risks during pregnancy and childbirth than white women. Black women in the UK are 2.7 times more likely to die during pregnancy compared with white women, and black babies are more than twice as likely to die before their first birthday as white babies. Until now, the biological pathways that may help explain the link between socioeconomic inequalities and poorer pregnancy outcomes in black women have received little attention. “Pregnancy and childbirth put great stress on a woman’s body. Black women may experience additional strain due to factors including systemic racism, socioeconomic disadvantage and environmental stressors. During pregnancy, this strain may affect key biological processes in ways that increase the risk of conditions such as pre-eclampsia,” said Grace Amedor, first author of the study, who conducted the work as part of her medical studies at the University of Cambridge. Amedor, now a resident doctor, added: “I wanted to investigate after I read that black women were much more likely to die in, or just after, pregnancy than white women. As a black woman myself that was scary to hear. I was surprised that although this disparity had been known for a long time, there was little research into the potential underlying physiological reasons.” Preeclampsia in pregnancy causes a woman to have very high blood pressure, which can lead to seizures and - in some cases - death. It can also lead to fetal growth restriction, when the baby doesn’t grow properly in the uterus, and pre-term birth, when a baby is born earlier than it should be. The report is published today in the journal Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism. Three key physiological differences The researchers identified three key physiological mechanisms that affect pregnancy outcomes, and show measurable differences between black and white women: Increased uteroplacental vascular resistance: This is a tightening of blood vessels that can reduce blood flow to the placenta. Their review identified differences in biological markers linked to this process, which may help explain higher rates of pre‑eclampsia, maternal hypertension, fetal growth restriction and preterm birth in black women. Higher oxidative stress: Oxidative stress occurs when damaging molecules called reactive oxygen species overwhelm the body’s antioxidant defences. The study found that black women often have higher levels of oxidative stress markers and lower levels of protective antioxidants. These imbalances can increase the risk of preterm birth, preeclampsia, and fetal growth restriction. Greater inflammation: Healthy pregnancy requires a carefully regulated immune response. The study found that black women show higher levels of several inflammation-related markers. These changes have been associated with preterm birth and preeclampsia. Driving change The Cambridge team hope their findings could help guide new approaches to reducing the disparity in pregnancy outcomes between black and white women. But they stress that long‑term change depends on addressing the social conditions that give rise to these unequal outcomes. “The significant disparity in pregnancy complications between black and white women is well known and has often been explained in terms of differences in medical care, alongside broader social and environmental inequalities. We’ve found these exposures can disproportionally affect black women’s bodies, making them less able to function healthily during pregnancy,” said Professor Dino Giussani, a scientist at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience and senior author of the study. “It’s important that we don’t stop trying to tackle the root causes that lead to worse pregnancy outcomes in black women, which are the socioeconomic disparities and the systemic racism they can experience throughout their lives,” said Amedor. Reference: Amedor, G. and Giussani, D.A.: ‘Physiological mechanisms mediating socio-environmental influences on pregnancy outcomes in black people.’ Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism, April 2026. DOI: 10.1016/j.tem.2026.03.003. The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Five academics from the University of Cambridge have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. They are among 252 leaders in academia, the arts, industry, journalism, philanthropy, policy, research, and science elected in 2026. The Cambridge academics elected are: Professor Julie Ahringer (Department of Genetics; Gurdon Institute) Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore (International Honorary Member) (Department of Psychology; Emmanuel College; Newnham College) Professor Vikram S. Deshpande (International Honorary Member) (Department of Engineering; Pembroke College) Professor Hiranya Peiris (International Honorary Member) (Institute of Astronomy; Murray Edwards College) Professor Susan J. Smith (International Honorary Member) (Department of Geography; Girton College) The Academy, chartered in 1780, was established to recognise accomplished individuals and engage them in addressing the greatest challenges facing the young republic. The first members elected to the Academy include George Washington, who said – in his first annual message to Congress in 1790 – “Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.” “We celebrate the achievement of each new member and the collective breadth and depth of their excellence – this is a fitting commemoration of the nation’s 250th anniversary,” said Academy President Laurie Patton. “The founding of the nation and the Academy are rooted in the inextricable links between a vibrant democracy, the free pursuit of knowledge, and the expansion of the public good.” The new class joins Academy members elected before them, including Benjamin Franklin (elected 1781) and Alexander Hamilton (1791) in the eighteenth century; Ralph Waldo Emerson (1864), Maria Mitchell (1848), and Charles Darwin (1874) in the nineteenth; Albert Einstein (1924), Robert Frost (1931), Margaret Mead (1948), Milton Friedman (1959), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1966), and Jacques Derrida (1985) in the twentieth; and, in this century, Madeleine K. Albright (2001), Antonin Scalia (2003), Jennifer Doudna (2003), Esther Duflo (2009), John Legend (2017), Anna Deavere Smith (2019), Salman Rushdie (2022), Xuedong Huang (2023), and José Andrés (2025). Induction ceremonies for new members will take place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October 2026. The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Antonio has spent the past seven years running toward fires that most others run from. A firefighter in the Brazilian Amazon since 2019, he works inside the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. But things are changing, and fast. “2024 was the most extreme year for fires,” Antonio said. “I had never seen anything like it. The forest burned like dry pasture – it was frightening for those of us who risk our lives to protect it.” What Antonio and his fellow firefighters are witnessing on the ground has been backed up by a new study. An international team of researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, have found that the policies that helped reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon over the past two decades have mostly failed to stop forest degradation: a slower and potentially more dangerous form of destruction. Their results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Unlike deforestation, where whole areas of forests are cleared for farming, industry or infrastructure, a degraded forest still has trees standing. However, it has been so damaged by fire, illegal logging, fragmentation, droughts and over-hunting that it has lost much of its ecological value. The forest floor, stripped of shade and moisture, becomes a tinderbox. “There’s still a forest there, but it’s so damaged that the carbon it once stored starts leaking, the animals have disappeared, and new grass species colonise the forest edges,” said lead author Dr Federico Cammelli from Cambridge’s Department of Geography and the Conservation Research Institute. “Tropical forest fires are low intensity, flames often go undetected under the canopy, but after one or two years, trees die while standing, and the forest transforms into a cemetery of dead standing trees.” Earlier research found that between 2001 and 2018, net carbon emissions from forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon were comparable or even higher than those from deforestation itself. By 2050, degradation could affect the entire Brazilian Amazon, but it has barely featured in the policies meant to protect it. Brazil has made real progress on deforestation. The first phase of the government’s Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Amazon, launched in the mid-2000s, reduced tree clearing by an estimated 60 to 80 percent. Agreements in the private sector – including a moratorium on soybeans from deforested land, and a commitment from meat packers not to source cattle from newly deforested areas – also contributed to the region’s success. However, the researchers found that four major policies meant to reduce deforestation across three Brazilian states did not reduce degradation. To date, little research has been done on this topic due to a lack of data on degradation and its drivers. The researchers integrated newly available degradation data with policy datasets to compare the impacts of four types of public and private sector policy interventions on different degradation drivers. When deforestation slows down, some degradation slows as well, since forests suffer less from so-called edge effects where cleared areas touch intact woodland. “However, we found no conclusive evidence that any of the supply chain policies, like the soy moratorium or the cattle agreements, tackled other big drivers of anthropogenic degradation, like fires, logging and fragmentation,” said Cammelli. In one case, the research suggests, even successful deforestation policies can make degradation worse. The G4 cattle agreement, signed by Brazil’s four biggest meat packers, appeared to be linked to an increase in timber extraction: possibly because as cattle ranching became more regulated, some businesses switched to the less-regulated logging sector. Back in Chico Mendes, Antonio sees some of the consequences of these gaps in policy. He said the dry season now lasts longer each year, forests are growing more fragile, and the rains arrive with sudden violence, washing out bridges and blocking roads. He is not optimistic that the law is keeping up. “Environmental laws should be stricter, and offenders should be properly punished,” he said. “If we lose the forest, we indirectly lose our lives.” Cammelli said that political will is vital. An update to Brazilian environmental policy published in 2023 includes forest degradation among the criteria for targeting environmental law enforcement towards municipalities with poor environmental records, along with requirements to reduce deforestation specifically. “Fires often spread over many properties and entail complex liabilities: who is responsible for ignition, who for fire spread? They are best addressed at the landscape scale. The timber sector remains poorly regulated, and much can be done to crack down on illegal logging,” he said. The researchers are calling for a fundamental shift in how governments, companies and regulators think about how to best protect forests. The EU Deforestation Regulation, which bans imports of products linked to forest destruction, defines degradation too narrowly, the researchers say, and largely overlooks the fire damage and fragmentation caused by soybean and beef production. The researchers are urging the EU to expand their definition of degradation. Despite commitments on deforestation, the researchers found no publicly documented examples of companies operating in the Brazilian Amazon that had set concrete targets for specifically addressing forest degradation. “Avoiding deforestation and degradation is so much more important for climate and nature than restoring what’s already gone,” said senior author Professor Rachael Garrett, also from Cambridge’s Department of Geography and Conservation Research Institute. “There are certain things you can’t get back.” “Every year,” said Antonio, “the forest and wildlife become more vulnerable.” The research was supported in part by the European Union and the Swiss National Science Foundation. Reference: Federico Cammelli et al. ‘Deforestation-focused policies do not reduce degradation in the Brazilian Amazon.’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2507793123 The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Damage to white matter in the brain can trigger features associated with neurodegenerative disease, Cambridge researchers have discovered in a new study published today in the journal Nature. A focal lesion in white matter...can trigger a coordinated response in connected grey matter, and that response is not simply damage. It is part of the brain’s attempt to repair itself. Ragnhildur Thóra Káradóttir Until now, it was thought that neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease were primarily associated with changes to the brain’s grey matter. This new finding suggests that treatments for neurodegenerative disease should target damage to the brain’s white matter, in addition to grey matter which has been the focus until now. The brain is equally divided into grey and white matter. Grey matter contains the brain’s processing hubs, linked by an information highway — the white matter. Although white matter damage is a defining feature of multiple sclerosis and is also seen in neurodegeneration including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, the consequences of white matter damage are not well understood. The team, led by Professor Ragnhildur Thóra Káradóttir at the University of Cambridge’s Stem Cell Institute, created localised damage to myelin – the main component of white matter – in a well-defined brain circuit and followed what happened over time. They found that small, localised myelin damage triggered a striking response in a connected, remote grey matter region. Neuronal activity fell, microglia – the brain’s immune cells – became activated, and connections between neurons were lost. Crucially, these changes were not permanent. After myelin was regenerated, neuronal activity recovered, connections between neurons returned, and the inflammatory response subsided. The study also challenges a common assumption about brain inflammation. Grey matter inflammation is traditionally viewed as harmful. But here, the team found that this transient response was part of the repair process itself. When they prevented grey matter inflammation, myelin regeneration was impaired. Conversely, when the team blocked myelin regeneration, the grey matter response did not resolve and instead became chronic. This suggests that failed myelin regeneration may help drive the persistent low-grade inflammation seen in neurodegenerative disease. Káradóttir, who also holds a position at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, said: “We found that a focal lesion in white matter is not just a local event. It can trigger a coordinated response in connected grey matter, and that response is not simply damage. It is part of the brain’s attempt to repair itself.” The finding is particularly relevant to multiple sclerosis, where white matter lesions, chronic inflammation and incomplete myelin regeneration are closely linked to disease progression. The work offers a new framework for understanding how local white matter damage may contribute to wider dysfunction across the brain and, when regeneration fails, to sustained inflammation. Professor Alasdair Coles, Professor of Clinical Neuroimmunology and Head of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge, added: “These findings suggest that therapies enhancing myelin regeneration could help slow the progression of a potentially wide range of brain disorders.” Reference: de Faria Jr et al: 'Focal white matter lesions drive grey matter inflammation and synapse loss', Nature, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10414-w The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

A new study suggests that malaria influenced where early humans lived in sub-Saharan Africa between around 74,000 and 5,000 years ago, fragmenting populations and influencing patterns of genetic exchange long before recorded history. By fragmenting human societies across the landscape, malaria contributed to the population structure we see today. Andrea Manica The presence of malaria affected where human populations lived across sub-Saharan Africa between 74,000 and around 5,000 years ago, a new study has found. Over tens of thousands of years, the presence of this disease shaped how human populations met and mixed - allowing genes to be exchanged, and helping create the population structure seen in humans today. The findings suggest that infectious disease was not simply a challenge early humans faced: it was a fundamental factor shaping the course of human evolution. The researchers say malaria may have driven populations away from high-risk environments and separated them across the landscape, or it may have caused high death rates in specific areas. Increasing evidence suggests that modern humans emerged through interactions between populations living in different parts of Africa, rather than from a single birthplace. Until now, however, most explanations for how those populations were distributed across the continent have focused on climate alone. The new research shows that disease - specifically malaria - also played a crucial role. The results are published today in the journal Science Advances. To reach their results, the team started with present-day distribution maps of Africa’s main malaria‑transmitting mosquito species. Then they used climate models to reconstruct how the ranges of these mosquitoes shifted over the past 74,000 years, alongside estimates of likely malaria transmission intensity. Finally, they compared these results with archaeological maps of ancient human settlements, and looked at where and when humans and malaria potentially overlapped. “We estimated the risk of malaria transmission across sub-Saharan Africa over the past 74,000 years, and found that ancient humans were not living in high-risk areas for the majority of this time,” said Dr Margherita Colucci in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, first author of the study. Colucci, who is also a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, added: “Our results indicate that ancient human populations strongly avoided, or were unable to survive in, areas with high malaria transmission risk. The effects of these choices shaped human demography for the majority of the last 74,000 years, and likely much earlier.” “By fragmenting human societies across the landscape, malaria contributed to the population structure we see today. Our study suggests that climate and physical barriers were not the only forces shaping where human populations could live,” said Professor Andrea Manica in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, a co-senior author of the study. The researchers found an increasing geographic overlap between human populations and malaria-carrying mosquitoes after around 15,000 years ago, beginning in West Africa. This coincides with the appearance of a human genetic mutation that gave rise to sickle-cell anaemia - and also provides partial protection against malaria. Until now, the emergence of infectious diseases affecting human populations was thought to be linked with the domestication of crops and the transition away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, thought to have begun around 8,000-7,000 years ago. Scientists have struggled to investigate the impact of disease on humanity’s early history due to a lack of direct evidence. The oldest ancient pathogen DNA, for example, is only around 10,000 years old, with the majority only from the last 2-3,000 years. In this study, the researchers used novel methods combining multiple lines of evidence that allowed them to reach much further back into the past. 74,000 years ago is a common time point for researchers to stop at when looking into the past. It coincides with the Toba supervolcano eruption - the largest known explosive eruption in human history. “Disease has rarely been considered a major factor shaping the earliest prehistory of our species, and without ancient DNA from these periods it has been difficult to test. Our research changes that, and provides a new framework for exploring the role of disease in deep human history,” said Professor Eleanor Scerri at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, also a senior author of the study. This research was funded by the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology. Reference: Colucci, M. et al: ‘Malaria shaped human spatial organization for the past 74 thousand years'. Science Advances, April 2026. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aea2316 Adapted from a press release by the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology. The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

An international team of researchers has identified an East African bat coronavirus capable of entering human cells. We found a new coronavirus receptor in human cells ahead of any virus spillover into the human population. Giulia Gallo The virus - Cardioderma cor coronavirus (CcCoV) KY43, or CcCoV-KY43 - can bind to a receptor cell found in the human lung, but testing in Kenya suggests it has not spilled over into the local human population. Rather than work on ‘live’ viruses, the scientists used a public database of known genetic sequences, Genbank, to select and synthesise alphacoronavirus ‘spike’ proteins, including 27 viruses originally isolated in bats, and screened these against a library of coronavirus receptors found in human cells. Spike proteins protrude from the surface of coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, and bind to specific receptors on human cells, triggering infection. Funded largely through UK Research and Innovation’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Kenya Government’s National Research Fund, the study brought together UK and Kenyan expertise to show CcCoV-KY43 binds to the human glycoprotein CEACAM6. Writing in the journal Nature, the team from The Pirbright Institute, the University of Cambridge, the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, the University of York and the National Museums of Kenya say their findings show alphacoronaviruses (alphaCovs) can use various receptors to enter human cells. “Viral spike proteins are keys that fit into locks (host receptors) to open the door and enter a cell. So far, we have identified one alphaCov receptor. The challenge now is to find the others,” said Professor Stephen Graham in the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge, joint senior author of the paper. “Before our study, it was assumed all alphacoronaviruses used just one of two possible receptors to enter their host, and the only difference was which species they could enter. We now know alphaCovs might use a whole variety of different receptors to open cells,” said Dr Dalan Bailey, Group Leader at the Pirbright Institute and joint senior author of the paper. “Not only did we find the new coronavirus receptor in human cells ahead of any virus spillover into the human population, but the study was performed using just a piece of the virus (the spike) rather than the whole pathogen, negating the need to import a live virus into the UK," said Dr Giulia Gallo, lead author of the paper who conducted the work at both the Pirbright Institute and the University of Cambridge. CcCoV-KY43 is found in heart-nosed bats, Cardioderma cor, an ecologically important species found mainly in eastern Africa including in eastern Sudan and northern Tanzania. The researchers say the zoonotic (animal-to-human) and pandemic potential of alphaCoVs has remained relatively unchartered - to date, only two cellular receptors have been characterized for alphaCoVs. The work identifies the need for further study in East Africa to better understand the risk from the family of viruses that can use this receptor to enter human cells. This will help scientists to be better prepared for any spillover of the virus into humans in the future, and potentially begin to start developing human vaccines and antivirals. The team wants to apply the same computational technology used in this study to find other potential human pathogens, and also to understand the wider drivers of zoonotic potential. Graham added: “We hope our findings will help better understand the risk from the family of viruses we identified that can use the human receptor: for example, by mapping the prevalence of the virus in bats and looking to see if it has already spilled over in at-risk populations.” Reference: Gallo, G et al: 'Heart-nosed bat alphacoronaviruses use human CEACAM6 to enter cells.' Nature, April 2026. Adapted from a press release by The Pirbright Institute. The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright ©University of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.