The IRFU has enlisted the aid of a cutting-edge healthcare company based in Cork to ensure its players are in top physical shape for next month’s World Cup.

Computer games to promote healthy tummies might seem ironic, but two new apps aim to help kids of all ages better appreciate the benefits of keeping their guts in good working order.

We all know that Irish rugby players are an incredibly gutsy bunch but few would have thought it possible to scientifically prove it.

Breakthrough research in the role gut bacteria have in regulating weight gain and cholesterol could lead to the design of probiotics for the control of obesity, high cholesterol, and diabetes.

Cells that destroy tumours and viral infections also play a major role in reducing gut inflammation, it has emerged.

A Cork-based food and health research facility is to receive €50m in funding from the Government and private industry, with more than 100 jobs to be created by the investment.

A Cork-based research centre is to benefit from a €50m cash injection.

Mice raised without bacteria in the gut showed distinctly autistic patterns of behaviour, choosing to interact with objects more than other mice, scientists at University College Cork (UCC) have found.

Ask any cut-and-thrust surgeon about a hard day’s work and he or she is likely to say something like: “It was bedlam today.

CECILY Brennan’s punchy paintings of angry red limbs torn up with eczema are so convincing that staff from UCC’s Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC) praised their accuracy.

Irish scientists have found that the happy hormone — serotonin — is regulated by the amount of gut bacteria in childhood.

Teagasc’s head of food research, Paul Ross, has been named as research professor in the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre in UCC.

IF you’ve got chemistry — as well as some rhythm and rhyme — here’s your chance to rap about it.

PROBIOTIC bacteria could be used to treat anxiety and depress-related disorders, according to a paper published by an Irish research team.

SIX senior level Cork-based food researchers have been named in the top 20 of 15,000 specialist authors in a global list compiled by the global ratings agency, Thomson Reuters Science Watch.

IRISH scientists have designed probiotics that can be used to modulate the physiology of host fat cells, a finding which could prove useful in controlling conditions such as obesity.

IRISH scientists are to lead the way in finding therapies to treat Alzheimer’s disease in a €14.6 million research project.

CORK scientists have discovered a harmless bacterium that may revolutionise the treatment of a potentially deadly hospital-acquired disease.

STOMACH illnesses are the biggest cause of people arriving into hospitals, but drugs are not working to improve patients’ lives, a conference in Killarney heard yesterday.

RESEARCH at University College Cork could help gardaí and other police forces identify the source of a highly dangerous illegal drug.

ONE of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies confirmed it is to invest €250 million in a Co Cork plant, creating a further 150 jobs.

UNIVERSITY College Cork (UCC) aims to rise in the ranks of the world’s third-level colleges when it fills the vacancy in the president’s office, after advertising the job in the international press this week.

A BIO-TECH campus company based in Cork signed a lucrative worldwide deal with a multi-national drugs giant yesterday giving it a slice of a €16 billion global market.

AN educational computer game that takes players on a bacteria-blasting journey through the human gut has been developed by University College Cork.