An international team of researchers has identified that cabergoline—a drug used to halt the production of breast milk—may reduce the risk of breast cancer when administered at the end of the lactation period. The findings, published this Thursday in the journal Cancer Discovery, combine evidence from animal models with an analysis of the medical records of more than 150,000 women in Spain and Norway.

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Science, Women, and Research Beyond Reproduction

The research involved scientists from several countries, including specialists from the Cancer Research Center in Salamanca—a joint facility of the University of Salamanca and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).

In studies involving mice, the researchers found that a dose of cabergoline administered at the end of lactation reduced the proportion of animals that developed breast cancer by approximately half. The models used carried mutations in the BRCA1 and TP53 genes, which are linked to DNA repair, the elimination of damaged cells, and aggressive forms of the disease.

According to the team, the drug reduced potentially precancerous tissue, decreased the ductal area, inhibited cell growth, and increased the presence of immune cells involved in defending against tumors.

The study focuses on mammary involution—the natural “clearing” process that occurs after weaning. During pregnancy, hormone levels rise and milk-producing structures branch out; once lactation ends, these cells are no longer needed, and the breast eliminates the excess tissue.

“It’s like a fruit tree; in spring and summer, the breast develops branches and produces flowers and fruit, but when involution occurs—which is the mammary equivalent of winter—the structures required for pregnancy and lactation are reset in preparation for the future,” explained Christopher Maxwell, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Medicine in Canada and a researcher at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute.

💊Un fármaco podría reducir el riesgo de #CáncerDeMama postparto

🔬Cabergolina se receta para frenar la lactancia tras el parto

👩‍🔬@ciccancer muestra en ratones que reduce los tumores 

🔎Un ensayo evaluará su eficacia en mujeres tras dejar de amamantar
➡️https://t.co/FqTffmBrvm pic.twitter.com/AahOcNLZyX

— CSIC (@CSIC) October 15, 2026

The text reads, “A drug could reduce the risk of #BreastCancer postpartum. Cabergoline is prescribed to halt breastfeeding after childbirth. @ciccancer shows in mice that it reduces tumors. A trial will evaluate its efficacy in women after stopping breastfeeding”

The researchers discovered that in mice with mutations in the BRCA1 and TP53 genes, this cleanup process can remain incomplete. In such cases, cabergoline appears to help complete the involution process following weaning.

To explore the effect in humans, the team reviewed medical records from Spain and Norway, focusing specifically on young women in the years following pregnancy. In total, the studies included data on the use of cabergoline in more than 150,000 women.

The results showed that women who received the drug to suppress lactation after childbirth—whether due to a medical recommendation, following the loss of a pregnancy, or because breastfeeding was not possible for medical reasons—had an approximately 70 percent lower risk of developing breast cancer compared to those who did not take it.

This association was observed in women under the age of 50 during the years following pregnancy—a period when the risk of this disease can increase.

Cabergoline is a prescription medication used only when medically necessary to stop milk production. It is not currently approved for the prevention of breast cancer; therefore, the authors emphasize that these findings should not be interpreted as a recommendation for its use as a preventive measure.

The next step will be a prospective clinical trial involving women who will receive the drug only after breastfeeding has ended. The goal is to determine whether cabergoline might, in the future, offer a less aggressive alternative to current preventive measures against breast cancer, such as surgery or hormone therapy.

#Science | A new Science special feature is putting the spotlight on major gaps in women’s health research beyond reproduction, from chronic pain and menopause to sex chromosomes and the immune system.

Researchers say significant gaps remain in understanding how diseases affect… pic.twitter.com/NXoaaRa3h5

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) October 2, 2026

When European Union leaders meet in Brussels later on Thursday (15 October), migration will be high on the agenda. Amid political panic — real and manufactured — over the events in Ceuta this summer, the European Commission has come out with a five-point plan promising more border surveillance and policing, more dodgy deals with countries outside the EU, and more deportations.

It also includes an ominous plan to devise a new “emergency response instrument” that could allow for the total suspension of access to asylum, which is likely to result in summary mass deportations, in situations when third countries are blamed for ‘instrumentalising’ migration movements.

That the idea is even on the table is a measure of how far the EU’s approach to migration has degenerated.

There is a jarring disconnect between commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s insistence on European values and the rules-based order and the willingness to throw the right to asylum out the window. 

It is a short-sighted and dangerous hypocrisy that will harm women, men, and children at EU borders and potentially beyond if it encourages other states to adopt a similar approach.

If a 20-year-old man I interviewed in Ceuta in August were at the summit in Brussels, he might help guide the debate back to the realities of why people flee and seek safety, their needs and aspirations and hopefully toward a policy informed by shared humanity.

A Ceuta story

He told me he escaped from his village in Somalia in November 2024 when the Islamist armed group Al-Shabab attacked it. He went to Libya and spent six months detained in a smuggler’s warehouse in Kufra, where he said he witnessed many deaths from nightly beatings.  He escaped, reached Morocco, and after months of hardship there saw his chance to seek safety on 31 July, when he swam to Ceuta.

It may well be that instrumentalisation played a role, among many other factors, in the arrival of more than 72,000 people there during two days at the end of July.

For many, the decision to cross may have been opportunistic and fuelled by disinformation on social media. Yet that cannot justify violence, summary returns, degrading treatment, or denying access to asylum procedures, in Ceuta or elsewhere.

Among the thousands who have remained in Ceuta are asylum seekers from strife-torn Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Chad, and elsewhere. 

Suspending asylum completely would not only thwart their chances to find protection. It would rupture the EU’s commitment to the rules-based international order in a profound way.

Rupture of rights

The right to seek asylum is embedded in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the related prohibition of refoulement — sending someone to a place where they face serious harm — is a red line through international human rights and refugee law.

The focus on deterrence and externalisation over the past decade – coinciding with the growing influence of the far-right in European politics – has arguably made this previously unthinkable option part of the conversation.

Both Greece (temporarily in 2020 and 2025) and Poland (continuously at its border with Belarus since March 2025) have suspended asylum without significant reaction from the commission or other member states.

The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, fully enacted as of June, undermines the right to asylum in myriad ways. A new Return Regulation portends deportations to third countries despite the documented harm of these kinds of transfers.

The Crisis Regulation, part of the pact, already allows a member state to depart from normal border procedures and curtail important safeguards in a situation of mass arrivals and/or when a third country or hostile non-state actor instrumentalises migration. While the regulation causes concern about potential misuse and unjustified restrictions on access to asylum, it does not allow for wholesale suspension of the right.

I met the young man from Somalia at the height of the humanitarian and rights crisis in Ceuta.

A difficult situation was compounded by recriminations against Spain from other EU countries, exploitation by far-right groups, and neglect and hostility that led to people living on the streets, in the forests, and in makeshift huts on the beach in an apparent effort to compel them to go back to Morocco. It took Spain weeks to begin housing and registering people.

Spain did not invoke the Crisis regulation.  Rather than adding new measures, policymakers should be wrestling with why it didn’t use supposedly tailor-made EU legislation and addressing how mismanagement and a finger-pointing lack of cooperation among EU states create an endless loop of crises that feed xenophobia.

 EU leaders should keep sight of the people affected and basic principles at stake. They should reject approaches to migration that so clearly violate fundamental rights and normalise cruelty.

As EU leaders gather in Brussels on Thursday and Friday (15-16 October) to discuss, among other things, the issue of Europe’s southern border, countless Moroccan families cling to the hope they may see their children again after they entered the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in north Africa in July. 

“Ayoub left on 30 July at 2PM. Since that day, I haven’t heard anything from him, apart from the fact that he went to Ceuta,” his brother said.

Ayoub Elkhamlichi was 27 when he left the north of Morocco for the nearby border with Ceuta, a half-hour drive from his home. 

In the commotion that accompanied the rush of an estimated 72,000 mostly Moroccans into the enclave over 30 and 31 July 2026, 141 people were reported to have lost their lives while attempting the crossing. 

Those that have not been heard of since that deadly July remain innumerable. 

Among them is Ayoub, who had been working in a local konafa shop before leaving.

His brother Mohamed Ali laments that he’d forgotten his ID card, which will reduce the chances he’ll be identified if he’s ever found. 

“The border with Ceuta was opened, so everyone left Morocco, because the city of Tetouan offers few job opportunities,” Mohamed Ali told EUobserver, from his home in one of Morocco’s closest cities to the Spanish border. 

“Ayoub managed to find a job, but the pay was low. So he went to Ceuta,” he said. His family, meanwhile, “are in a state of anxiety and fear.”

It has been 11 weeks since Khaled’s dad Said has also seen his son, 26, who left for Ceuta from Tidass, a small Moroccan town, which Said said “has its problems.”

This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership

Thousands rally for better-funded public schools as a teachers’ strike in Madrid leaves two people injured and five students arrested.

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Five students were arrested and two people injured during police confrontations in Madrid on Wednesday, as thousands of teachers and supporters took to the streets on the first day of a regional teachers’ strike demanding better funding, smaller classes and improved working conditions in public education.

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Demonstrators wearing green gathered at Puerta del Sol before marching through central Madrid towards the regional Education Department. The protests targeted the education policies of regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso, whom demonstrators accuse of weakening public schools by diverting taxpayer funds to private education and refusing to negotiate with teachers and parent associations, according to teleSUR correspondent Álvaro Fragua.

Police also confronted students at Madrid’s Complutense University during a demonstration in support of the strike. Two people were taken to hospital with injuries. Five university students and a woman participating in a separate demonstration in central Madrid were arrested. No further arrests had been reported at the time of the report.

Text Reads: 📚 Non-university teachers in the Community of Madrid, Spain, began an indefinite strike this Wednesday—called by trade unions—to demand better working conditions and more resources for quality public education. No end date has been set for the stoppage.
🧑‍🏫 Their demands include better conditions for teaching staff, increased resources for public education, smaller class sizes, and proper care for all students.
📢 Demonstrations have been organized for the initial days of the strike: a march from Atocha to Puerta del Sol this afternoon and a human chain on Thursday at the Department of Education.

Teachers said educational inequality was reflected in disparities between neighborhoods, arguing that children’s access to quality education depended on where they lived, with poorer communities bearing the greatest burden.

The strikers are demanding changes to class sizes, teaching workloads and specialist support for students with additional educational needs. Their proposals include capping classes at 13 students in early childhood education, 15 in primary school, 20 in secondary school, 23 in upper secondary education and 15 in vocational training.

They also want weekly teaching loads limited to 17 periods for secondary school and vocational training teachers and 22 for primary school teachers. The proposed limits would include tutoring, department leadership and coordination duties.

Improving support for students with disabilities and other educational needs is another central demand. Teachers are calling for at least one guidance counselor for every 250 students, one community services professional at each school, one therapeutic education teacher for every eight students and one speech and language specialist for every 12. They also want a compensatory education teacher at every school and additional staffing guarantees for special education.

On pay, the strikers are seeking a €600 monthly increase in the regional general teaching supplement, along with pay parity for vocational training teachers and specialists in community services, therapeutic education, and speech and language support. They are also demanding a special allowance for hazardous working conditions in special education and at least one full-time administrative assistant at every school.

The demands extend to school infrastructure and workplace safety. Teachers want a comprehensive, sustainable climate-control plan for schools, the removal of asbestos, an end to phased construction of public schools and stronger occupational health and safety measures. They are also calling for an equity plan to ensure adequate support for students facing socioeconomic hardship, those with special educational needs and other vulnerable groups.

Teachers announced a larger demonstration for Wednesday afternoon, with a march planned from Atocha to Puerta del Sol, where people were continuing a protest camp in support of the public education movement. The strike’s first day brought demands for changes to staffing, funding, pay and school conditions alongside opposition to the regional government’s education policies.