Helping parents with sex education.

Health visitors, school nurses and other community nurses are sometimes asked for advice by parents and carers on the emerging sexuality of their children. Parents often lack knowledge about sexual development and are confused about whether to talk to their children about sex. They may have been brought up in a family where sex was not mentioned.

High-intensity exercise induces structural, compositional and metabolic changes in cuboidal bones--findings from an equine athlete model.

Fatigue fracture of cuboidal bones occurs in the human foot as well as the equine carpus. The racehorse provides a naturally-occurring model to study the effects of high-intensity exercise on the morphology and metabolism of cuboidal bones. We studied both the mineral and the collagenous matrix of the third (C(3)) and radial (C(r)) carpal bones of raced and non-raced Thoroughbred (TB) horses.

Intervertebral disc degeneration can predispose to anterior vertebral fractures in the thoracolumbar spine.

Unlabelled: Mechanical experiments on cadaveric thoracolumbar spine specimens showed that intervertebral disc degeneration was associated with reduced loading of the anterior vertebral body in upright postures. Reduced load bearing corresponded to locally reduced BMD and inferior trabecular architecture as measured by histomorphometry. Flexed postures concentrated loading on the weakened anterior vertebral body, leading to compressive failure at reduced load.