From Art as Medicine to Health Sciences Research

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to present the August 2025 issue of the Yeditepe Journal of Health Sciences, our second issue.

The cover painting of this issue is Coronavirus by Neş’e Erdok, a well-known Turkish figurative painter. During the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, she created two paintings titled Corona, and the work featured here is the second. As Shaun McNiff has emphasized in his book Art as Medicine:

“Art as medicine does not restrict its interactions to human relationships. Concentration on the ‘other’ ensouls the world, and paintings are ensouled objects or beings who guide, watch, and accompany their makers and the people who live with them. Their medicine is established by this ‘otherness,’ which enables them to influence people who open themselves to receiving help from another.”

Inspired by this perspective, we intend to continue featuring medicine-related artworks on the cover of our journal. We sincerely thank Neş’e Erdok for allowing us to publish her Corona painting on the cover of YJHS.

This issue brings together articles from diverse disciplines, which we hope will contribute to current knowledge and inspire new research directions for our readers. It includes a review article on reference ranges in clinical laboratories as well as research articles ranging from the discovery of a chemical substance to studies on the antibiotic use of adults.

As stated in our inaugural issue, our goal is to be indexed in both national and international databases, and we are working diligently toward this aim. Progress is steady, and each issue brings us closer to achieving it.

Steve Jobs once said, “Great things are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.” The same holds true for our journal. We extend our heartfelt thanks to all the authors who contributed their articles, the reviewers who provided valuable feedback—often on very short notice—and our editorial team, as well as .doc, for their meticulous work.

We invite scientists from around the world to submit their work and join us in building this journal into a valuable resource for the global health sciences community.

Warm regards from Istanbul,

Gülderen Yanıkkaya Demirel

Editor-in-Chief