A rare and life-threatening kidney disease in children finally has an effective therapy, thanks in large part to pioneering research and clinical leadership from University of Iowa Health Care Stead Family Children’s Hospital.  

Heavy metals in soil are often measured in bulk, but those totals can badly overestimate the real risk to crops, ecosystems and human health, according to a new scientific review. The article, published in Environmental and Biogeochemical Processes, explains that only a fraction of the metal present in soil is actually accessible to plants, microbes and people – a concept known as bioavailability.

 

A new international study led by the Nanobiosystems group at CIC nanoGUNE, is developing miniature, non-invasive, precise robotic catheters for use in reproductive medicine and gynaecological health. This research, which was recently published in the prestigious journal Advanced Materials, has the potential to improve infertility treatments, for example, and enable the highly localised release of drugs and cells.

The odds of iron deficiency in adolescent girls are almost 14 times higher among those who experience heavy menstruation and follow a meat-restricted diet, compared to girls with normal menstruation who eat an omnivorous diet

Male infertility is a major issue worldwide and its causes remain unclear. Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) in Japan have now discovered a key structure in the germ cells of male mice that, when disturbed, leads to abnormal sperm tails and infertility. The discovery was made possible by the first observation of the mouse flagellar base structure using ultrastructure expansion microscopy and could explain some forms of infertility in human men.