She conducted seminal work in India in the late 1920s and early 1930s on macrocytic anaemia of pregnancy.

Macrocytic anaemia is characterised by enlarged red blood cells and is life threatening.

After her return to England, there were a number of further papers concerning her work on tropical macrocytic anaemia.

She postulated that there must have been another nutritional factor responsible for this macrocytic anaemia other than vitamin B deficiency.

Lucy Wills decided to investigate possible nutritional treatments by first studying the effects of dietary manipulation on a macrocytic anaemia in albino rats.

In 1928 Lucy Wills began her seminal research work in India on macrocytic anaemia in pregnancy.

Van den Berghe and colleagues originally drew attention to the deletion of 5q in elderly female patients with macrocytic anaemia, normal or raised platelet counts, hypolobulated megakaryocytes, and a low risk of leukaemic transformation.

Back in Bombay, Lucy Wills conducted clinical trials on patients with the macrocytic anaemia, and established experimentally that this type of anaemia could be both prevented and cured by yeast extracts, of which the cheapest source was Marmite.