Homepage Round-Up: Gender Bias Still Exists in Health Care, the Dangers of Thirdhand Smoke, and More.

Here are the top stories covered by DocWire News this week in the Homepage section. In this week’s edition of the round-up: gender bias still exists in health care, thirdhand smoke damages human cells and DNA, plus two stories you might have missed from last week.

Despite positive nationwide changes in gender expectations, hospital patients still exhibit gender bias in the recognition of lead physicians and nurses, although the numbers are improving. These findings were published in the Journal of Women’s Health. In this study, researchers used convenience sampling to enroll and survey 150 patients at a single urban teaching hospital. According to the findings, out of 150 encounters, patients correctly discerned both resident and attending male doctors 76% of the time and both resident and attending female doctors 71.3% of the time. Moreover, out of 148 nurse encounters, patients recognized their nurse in 87.8% of the encounters, with the identification of female nurses shown to be notably higher than patient recognition of male nurses.

A new study published in JAMA Network Open suggests that thirdhand smoke (THS) has a detrimental effect on human cells and DNA and this data may be valuable to physicians treating patients exposed to THS. In this study, researchers procured nasal epithelium samples from 13 participants during a clinical trial that was conducted at the University of California between 2011 and 2015. According to the findings, while only two genes (which were not studied further) were affected by exposure to clean air, a total of 389 differentially expressed genes were discerned in nasal epithelium exposed to THS. “Our data show that cells in humans are affected by thirdhand smoke,” said Prue Talbot, lead researcher of this study.

Also, in case you missed it from last week’s roundup:

There exists a correlation between household food insecurity (HFI) and type 2 diabetes (T2D), according to researchers who published their findings in The Journal of Nutrition. In this study, researchers queried 121 low-income Latinos with type 2 diabetes using a six-item US Household Food Security Survey. IR, fasting blood glucose, insulin levels, stress hormones, and inflammation indicators were all measured and assessed. According to the results of the study, when juxtaposed with food-secure individuals, food-secure individuals possessed a notably higher IR, insulin, glucose, stress hormones, inflammation, and total cholesterol.

Scientists from the University of Dundee and NHS Tayside in the UK have developed an Intelligent Liver Function test (iLFT) that can potentially detect liver disease in its early stages decades before it becomes fatal. The findings of this study were published in the Journal of Hepatology. According to the results of the study, the use of iLFT lead to a 43% increase in the diagnosis of liver disease. Moreover, the algorithm exhibited a diagnostic accuracy rate of over 90%. “In looking at a large set of patient data from Tayside we noticed abnormal liver function tests popping up that were not fully investigated,” said Professor John Dillon, who was part of the team who developed the algorithm.