Healthy Women, Healthy Men

When cardiologist Carolin Lerchenmüller takes up her position at the beginning of May, she will become the first professor of gender medicine at the University of Zurich – as well as in Switzerland. With this, UZH is breaking new ground. Gender medicine focuses on how diseases differ between women and men. In the early 1980s, US physician Marianne Legato discovered that heart problems can manifest differently depending on a patient’s gender and, as a result, require different approaches to treatment. This was an important first step in taking a gender specific view of disease and establishing the field of gender medicine.

The new UZH Magazine shines a light on gender medicine research being conducted at UZH and the university’s hospitals. “Gender medicine is an important part of precision medicine, which is a focus of the University Medicine Zurich (UMZH),” says Beatrice Beck Schimmer, Vice President Medicine at UZH. For her, the first-ever chair of gender medicine is just the beginning. In the long run, the aim is to join forces with partner institutions to build up a Switzerland-wide network for gender medicine. “We want to involve as many people as possible and foster a shared commitment,” says Carolin Lerchenmüller.

The UZH Magazin also features a wide range of additional topics, including research on hate messages in social media and an in-depth look at current developments in Eastern European and the newly established institute for Eastern European studies at UZH. As always, a selection of articles from the magazine will be published here in English over the coming weeks. Stay tuned!