Morreale was born in 1930 in
Milan, Italy. Her father, Eugenio Morreale, was a Sicilian biologist and diplomat, and her mother, Emilia de Castro, was a biologist and a curator for the
Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano (Milan Natural History Museum). She attended schools in
Vienna, Austria and
Baltimore, United States, before finishing the
Baccalaureate in
Málaga, Spain. She studied chemistry at the
University of Granada, earning a doctoral degree. Her doctoral thesis showed that the incidence of
endemic goitre in the
Alpujarras region was closely linked to
iodine deficiency. In 1953, she married Francisco Escobar del Rey, with whom she would collaborate for the rest of her scientific career. From 1963 to 1975, she led the thyroid studies division of the Gregorio Marañón Health Research Institute in Madrid. In 1974, Morreale and Escobar became employed by the
Autonomous University of Madrid, where they co-founded the Instituto de Investigaciones Biomedicas. Morreale's early research demonstrated through
animal studies that
thyroxine (T4) is converted to
triiodothyronine (T3), and she developed sensitive
radioimmunoassays for the detection of T3 and T4. She showed that, in pregnant women, maternal thyroid hormones are transferred via the
placenta to the fetus and maternal-fetal transfer of T4 is important for fetal brain development. She implemented a national
newborn screening program for
congenital hypothyroidism in Spain and her research led to the introduction of
iodised salt in Spain to prevent endemic goitre caused by iodine deficiency. Morreale was a co-founder of the European Thyroid Association and served as its president from 1978 to 1980. She was awarded an honorary doctorate in medicine from the
University of Alcalá in 2001 and became an honorary member of the
European Society of Endocrinology in 2008. She died on 4 December 2017 at 87 years old. ==References==