Principles of Gender-Specific Medicine explains how normal human biology differs between men and women and how the diagnosis and treatment of disease differs as a function of gender. This revealing new research covers various conditions that occur predominantly in men, and conditions that occur predominantly in women. Among the subjects covered are cardiovascular disease, mood disorders, the immune system, lung cancer as a consequence of smoking, osteoporosis, diabetes, obesity, and infectious disease.
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REVIEWS:
“The book will benefit primary care practitioners and physicians who manage chronic conditions. By bringing the information together, Legato sets the stage for the future of an exciting and rich new field…Some chapters can serve as independent monographs, and all seem to use current references and reflect a good review of the pertinent literature. Some chapters recommend sources for additional reading. In addition, authors identify gaps in the literature and offer recommendations for further investigation. These recommendations are among the best features of the textbook…We commend the editor, section editors, and chapter authors of this wonderful textbok. Principles of Gender-Specific Medicine has the potential to change the minds of those who have struggled to understand what “gender-based medicine” really means. The bottom line is that this effort has created a broad range of research opportunities and, consequently, the chance to improve treatment and disease outcomes for all: women, men, the poor, the rich, minorities and nonminorities, and, most important, children–the next generation of men and women.”
-JAMA, 2004; 292: 2921-2922
“A new field of investigation, education, and clinical practice is to be recognized by all who practice medicine…The information in this textbook can only be found in piecemeal if at all in standard medical textbooks, and we are pleased to know that there is now a text that brings this information together.”
–William H. Wehrmacher, MD and Harry Messmore, MD, Loyola University of Chicago, Stritch School of Medicine, Maywood, IL for Clin Appl Thrombosis/Hemostasis 11(4):500, 2005

Marianne J. Legato, MD, Ph. D. (hon. c.), FACP is an internationally renowned academic, physician, author, lecturer, and pioneer in the field of gender-specific medicine. She is a Professor Emerita of Clinical Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Dr. Legato is also the Director of the Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine, which she founded in 2006 as a continuation of her work with The Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University. She received an honorary PhD from the University of Panama in 2015 for her work on the differences between men and women.
At its core, gender-specific medicine is the science of how normal human biology differs between men and women and how the diagnosis and treatment of disease differs as a function of gender. Dr. Legato’s discoveries and those of her colleagues have led to a personalization of medicine that assists doctors worldwide in understanding the difference in normal function of men and women and in their sex-specific experiences of the same diseases.
She began her work in gender-specific medicine by authoring the first book on women and heart disease, The Female Heart: The Truth About Women and Coronary Artery Disease, which won the Blakeslee Award of the American Heart Association in 1992. Because of this research, the cardiovascular community began to include women in clinical trials affirming the fact that the risk factors, symptoms, and treatment of the same disease can be significantly different between the sexes. Convinced that the sex-specific differences in coronary artery disease were not unique, Dr. Legato began a wide-ranging survey of all medical specialties and in 2004, published the first textbook on gender-specific medicine, The Principles of Gender-Specific Medicine. The second edition appeared in 2010 and the third edition, dedicated to explaining how gender impacts biomedical investigation in the genomic era, won the PROSE Award in Clinical Medicine from the Association of American Publishers in 2018. A fourth edition is forthcoming.
She also founded the first scientific journals publishing new studies in the field, The Journal of Gender-Specific Medicine, and a newer version, Gender Medicine, both listed in the Index Medicus of the National Library of Medicine. She has founded a third peer-reviewed, open access journal, Gender and the Genome, which focuses on the impact of biological sex on technology and its effects on human life.
Dr. Legato is the author of multiple works, including: What Women Need to Know (Simon & Schuster, 1997), Eve’s Rib (Harmony Books, 2002), Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget (Rodale, 2005), Why Men Die First (Palgrave, 2008), The International Society for Gender Medicine: History and Highlights (Academic Press, 2017), and most recently, The Plasticity of Sex (Academic Press, 2020). Her books have been translated into 28 languages to date.
As an internationally respected authority on gender medicine, Dr. Legato has chaired symposia and made keynote addresses to world congresses in gender-specific medicine in Berlin, Israel, Italy, Japan, Panama, South Korea, Stockholm, and Vienna. In collaboration with the Menarini Foundation, she is co-chairing a symposium on epigenetics, Sex, Gender and Epigenetics: From Molecule to Bedside, to be held in Spring 2021 in Italy. She maintains one of the only gender-specific private practice in New York City, and she has earned recognition as one of the “Top Doctors in New York.”