Reducing HIV Risk in Young Transgender Women
A behavioral program significantly reduced the sexual risk for HIV infection among young transgender women, according to a Northwestern Medicine clinical trial.
Medical Schools Lag Behind in Tuition Aid for Veterans
Veterans Affairs-supported tuition aid for military veterans enrolling in medical school covers a smaller proportion of tuition compared to aid for other graduate programs, according to a recently published Northwestern Medicine study.
Sugar Pills Relieve Pain for Chronic Pain Patients
Scientists have shown they can predict which chronic pain patients will respond to a placebo pill based on brain anatomy and psychological characteristics.
New Blood
A gene therapy delivers novel solution for treating serious blood disease. Read the story in Northwestern Medicine magazine.
Movement and Rehabilitation Science Training Day Highlights Collaboration
Students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty from Northwestern and beyond gathered at the eighth annual Movement and Rehabilitation Sciences Training Day to share scientific results and methods and to network with colleagues.
How Non-Coding RNA Regulates Genes in the Developing Brain
Northwestern Medicine scientists have identified how a type of RNA regulates genes over an unprecedented distance, during a critical process of embryonic brain development that affects adult seizure susceptibility.
Media Coverage
Daily aspirin may be harmful for healthy older adults, large study finds
That’s a decision Dr. Mark Huffman plans to make in conversations with his patients. “Some of them will say, ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it,’ ” predicted Huffman, an associate professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine. “Others will say, ‘If the data suggest I might not have any benefit, I would like to take fewer pills.’
Eat this, not that: New FoodSwitch app helps you shop for healthier options
Northwestern Medicine has joined the mix with FoodSwitch, which dubs itself “a nutritionist whispering in your ear.” As you grocery shop, the app allows you to scan an item’s bar code, pull up nutrition facts such as saturated fat, sugar, sodium and energy, and get its health rating based on a five-star scale. Finally, FoodSwitch will suggest healthier alternatives from its database of more than 268,000 products.The app, which launched in June, is a collaboration of The George Institute for Global Health in Australia, data from Chicago-based Label Insight, and academic support from Northwestern. “We needed a system to monitor what’s in the food supply in order to improve the helpfulness of what we eat every day,” said Dr. Mark Huffman, associate professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine.
The Placebo Effect Is Real, and Scientists May Be Able To Predict Who Responds
“The standard line has been that placebo response is real, but it is not predictable,” says study co-author A. Vania Apkarian, a professor of physiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “That’s the classic viewpoint in the literature: that you cannot predict who will respond or how much they will respond. In fact, we can predict both of them.”
Scientists say they’ve developed blood test that can detect internal body clock
“Before we didn’t have a clinically feasible way of assessing the clock in healthy people and people with disease. Now we can see if a disrupted clock correlates with various diseases and, more importantly, if it can predict who is going to get sick,” said the study’s coauthor Ravi Allada, a professor of neurobiology at Northwestern University, in a statement…“Knowing what time it is in your body is crucial to getting the most effective benefits. The best time for you to take the blood pressure drug or the chemotherapy or radiation may be different from somebody else,” Dr. Phyllis Zee, coauthor of the study and chief of sleep medicine in neurology at Northwestern, said in a statement.