Mira has launched an at-home cortisol tracking kit that allows women to monitor stress-related patterns over time using urine samples.

The Cortisol Pattern Kit measures urinary free cortisol directly from a urine sample and displays results through the company’s existing monitor and app.

The system is intended for repeated testing rather than a single measurement, allowing users to compare results with a personal baseline built from their own data.

Mira said consistent daily testing can establish a baseline in about a week. It recommends testing in the morning and evening to see how cortisol patterns change throughout the day.

Cortisol is involved in the body’s stress response but is not a direct or complete measure of stress. The company said the kit is intended for general wellness use and is not designed to diagnose stress, an endocrine condition or any other medical condition.

The Cortisol Pattern Wands use the same lateral-flow testing format as Mira’s existing hormone tests. Users dip a wand into a urine sample, insert it into the Mira Monitor and view the result in the app within minutes.

The company said cortisol data can be viewed alongside cycle, hormone and daily routine information.

Sylvia Kang, founder and chief executive of Mira, said: “The Cortisol Pattern™ Kit gives women a new way to understand their stress patterns over time, in the context of their own biology.”

She added: “We built Mira to give women answers they had spent far too long searching for, beginning with the TTC journey and expanding into hormone and cycle tracking across life stages, including perimenopause. Now, we’re taking Mira beyond reproductive health and into everyday wellness, bringing personalised stress-pattern tracking directly into women’s homes.”

Mira said more than 350,000 women already use its platform to track their cycle and hormones.

Waitlist sign-ups for the Cortisol Pattern Kit and Cortisol Pattern Wands opened on 22 September, with wand refills available to pre-order in 20- and 30-count options.

Manchester City has launched a female athlete health platform covering menstrual, pelvic and breast health, as well as nutrition.

The Her City website is designed for the club’s women’s first-team players, coaches, support staff, academy players and parents.

Manchester City says the platform is the first of its kind in the Women’s Super League and was developed over two years.

The project was led by director of performance services Emma Deakin, physical performance scientist Rosie Anderson and PhD student and first-team nutritionist Sarah Malone.

It grew out of PhD research into menstrual, pelvic and breast health and nutrition, with the team seeking to turn that work into an online educational resource.

The website divides the four areas into separate sections and provides peer-reviewed information that the club says has been critically analysed by experts.

Content will continue to be reviewed and updated as further evidence emerges.

Resources include posters, visual explainers, audio materials and downloadable educational content, with information tailored to different groups including players and parents.

The platform aims to improve knowledge, develop critical analysis skills and strengthen communication within football and at home.

It also includes material to help users assess misinformation they encounter on social media or elsewhere.

A confidential contact form allows users to raise concerns or ask questions directly of experts at Manchester City.

Parents of academy players can also access the platform, with resources intended to help them support their children during a key phase of their development.

Manchester City said its longer-term aim is to make the platform available to all women working across City Football Group.

Michigan State University researchers are launching a novel project to transform how medications are developed and prescribed for women.

A US$4.6m award will fund computer models designed to predict how hormonal changes affect the way medicines move through and act in women’s bodies.

The funding is the first instalment of an award worth up to US$12.8m over three years, supporting work intended to account for hormonal changes throughout women’s lives.

Researchers plan to examine factors including menstrual cycles, pregnancy, contraceptive use, menopause and hormone replacement therapy, which can affect responses to medicines.

Teresa K. Woodruff, lead investigator on the project, said: “Because female hormone levels are constantly shifting, precision medicine allows us to map out these complex interactions.

“This NIH-backed initiative will create the first computationally driven clinical tool designed to guide medical care across every stage of a woman’s life.”

The project is led by researchers at Michigan State University and funded by the National Institutes of Health, with collaborators from Rutgers, Emory, Tulane, the University of Colorado Anschutz, the University of Michigan and the University of Utah.

Thirteen researchers will develop computational models to predict how changes in female hormones influence the way medicines move through and act within the body.

The work is part of the NIH Computational Modeling of Hormone Homeostasis Initiative, which is awarding US$21m nationally to support research into sex-specific hormonal biology.

The team plans to use artificial intelligence to digitise and organise more than 40 years of hormone research data in a publicly accessible database.

Researchers will also develop a standard computer model of a 28-day menstrual cycle, alongside models of how hormones regulate organs and tissues involved in processing nutrients, including the liver, muscle and fat.

Real-world patient data will then be used to expand the models to represent groups including women going through menopause or taking birth control, as well as women with conditions such as diabetes and obesity.

The project will also use three-dimensional human tissue models and lab-grown organoids, including liver, muscle and ovarian tissue, to test and refine the computer predictions.

Researchers plan to examine medicines including metformin, insulin and GLP-1 drugs, with the aim of developing tools that could help clinicians tailor doses and avoid harmful side effects.

Qiang Zhang, associate professor at Emory University, said: “Empowered by AI, novel assays and legacy human data, we will develop mechanistically based computational models of female physiology that can make translational, quantitative predictions for women’s responses to metabolic therapies.”

The researchers said the work could help address differences in how women respond to treatments for metabolic conditions including obesity, type 2 diabetes, cholesterol imbalances and thyroid disorders.

Nanette Santoro, professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz and president of the Endocrine Society, said: “Women experience large shifts in reproductive hormones at several points in their lifespan: puberty, pregnancy and menopause.

“During reproductive years, women also undergo profound day-to-day changes in reproductive hormone levels, giving them a markedly different endocrine backdrop than men.

“Using state-of-the-art computational technology to examine how these changes interact with commonly used medications is a critical pathway toward supporting life-course women’s health.”

The project team said its computer models and data will be made freely available to researchers and healthcare professionals when the work is completed.