Women who suffer repeated unexplained miscarriages can be helped to have babies if preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is carried out on their embryos before they are placed in the womb.

Ms Carmen Rubio told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual conference in Vienna today (Monday 1 July) that her research showed that chromosomal abnormalities (aneuploidies) in the embryos were important causes of unexplained recurrent miscarriages (RM) and implantation failur

Norwegian and Swedish researchers have developed a new type of internal radiation therapy for cancer that has spread to skeletal tissue. Experience from an early patient test is optimistic, according to a report being presented at the 18th International Cancer Congress in Oslo this week.

Many patients with advanced breast, prostate or lung cancer experience metastasis to skeletal tissue. This is often a source of pain and suffering.

Exterior irradiation and medication, including ra

A process that would be a plastics recycler’s nightmare may help farmers deal with the disposal of agricultural and domestic plastics by creating burnable, energy-efficient plastic nuggets, according to a Penn State agricultural engineer.

“In plastics recycling there are two unbreakable rules,” says James W. Garthe, instructor in agricultural engineering and cooperative extension specialist. “You cannot mix types of plastic, and the plastics must be clean. This process does both since

Human neurons grown as cells cloned from a tumor helped restore the function of severely injured spinal cords in rats, University of South Florida researchers say in a study released this week in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine.

“Transplants of these specially treated cells were used to patch a short circuit in the spinal cord of rats,” said Samuel Saporta, PhD, associate director of the USF Center for Aging and Brain Repair, professor of anatomy and lead author of the study. “We demonstr

A team of Ohio State University researchers has returned from an expedition in southeastern Alaska with the longest ice core ever drilled from a mountainous glacier.

The core measures 460 meters (1,509 feet) and is 150 meters (492 feet) longer than the previous longest core – a record of ice from the Guliya ice cap in western China that eventually relinquished a climate record stretching back 760,000 years – the oldest such record retrieved to date.

Until the new core is analyzed in

A research letter in this week’s issue of THE LANCET suggests that night-time illumination could help prevent the onset of diabetic retinopathy, a condition which can result in severe visual impairment in people with diabetes.

People with diabetes generally have impaired blood capillary function, which reduces oxygen uptake to body tissue, including the retina. It has been suggested that retinal damage associated with diabetes (diabetic retinopathy) might be initiated by oxygen deprivation t