Frontiers | Science news

Science news post list

450 news posts in Health

Health

21 May 2021

‘We need more research which examines racism and racialization on health and wellbeing of black women’

By Colm Gorey, Frontiers science writer/Dr Jenny Douglas, The Open University Dr Jenny Douglas, The Open University. Image: Jenny Douglas To mark the launch of the new research topic entitled ‘Dismantling racial inequalities in higher education’, Dr Jenny Douglas of The Open University reveals how events in her childhood opened her eyes to racial inequality and the need for more research into black women’s health and wellbeing. Despite various efforts to tackle racial inequality in higher education across the globe, numerous research efforts have shone a spotlight on the obvious disparity between grades received by people of color versus white students. Now, in an effort to catalogue this inequality, Frontiers has launched a new Research Topic called ‘Dismantling racial inequalities in higher education’ led by topic editors Prof Marcia Wilson and Dr Jenny Douglas of The Open University, based in the UK. It is based on a series of group seminars held by the university for black and minority ethnic (BME) researchers. In relation to racial inequalities in higher education, a plethora of reports have identified the BME awarding gap and the experience of BME students in higher education; the lack of BME academics, particularly BME professors in higher education. […]

Health

23 Apr 2021

‘Fingerprint’ in blood markers may reveal heart attack in chest pain patients

By Conn Hastings, science writer Image: New Africa / Shutterstock When a patient with chest pain arrives at hospital, time is of the essence. Doctors must quickly rule heart attack in or out and start treatment as soon as possible. A new study reveals blood biomarkers that could help. By analyzing blood samples from patients with chest pain, researchers found a unique fingerprint of heart attack in the form of blood biomarkers. The results could help doctors to quickly diagnose and treat heart attack patients. A patient arrives at hospital with chest pain. Doctors suspect heart attack and rapid diagnosis is important, but the tests to confirm it can be invasive and it could easily be something else. Could a simple blood test help to non-invasively rule heart attack in or out? A new study in open access journal Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine certainly suggests so. The study identified telltale markers in the blood of heart attack patients that distinguished them from patients suffering chest pain with other causes. The researchers hope that the results will lead to new diagnostic tests for heart attacks.  Read original article Download original article (pdf) If you have ever suffered chest pain, the […]

Health

16 Feb 2021

COVID-19 crisis – a technology providing unconventional supply relief

By Kate E. Mullins / EPFL Credit: Felix Schürmann and coauthors When the full-scale effect of the COVID-19 pandemic was starting to be understood in early 2020, the EPFL Blue Brain Project and ETH Zurich, as part of the Swiss National COVID-19 Science Task Force, began collaborating with Spiez Laboratory on an online Platform – Academic Resources for COVID-19 (ARC). In a paper published in Frontiers for Public Health, the authors explain how the ARC Platform was set up to be a service to support Swiss diagnostic laboratories that are testing for SARS-CoV-2. The ARC Platform matched requests for critical equipment, reagents and consumable goods required by Swiss diagnostic laboratories involved in combating COVID-19 with supplies available from Swiss academic groups. Since then, with further input from Swiss startup Apptitude SA, the Platform has evolved with the needs of the epidemiological situation and the technology has been open sourced with the purpose to serve public health as a response solution for other countries and communities in the current COVID-19 crisis or in future crises. In the beginning of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland, diagnostic testing had to be ramped up in a very short time, but even basic molecular […]