After two months of tests, a mom of three was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. ALS impacts the nerves that control our muscles, causing them to weaken and atrophy. There’s no cure. “It was devastating to realize that our plans for our young family were completely upended by my diagnosis,” Rankin said. Dr. John Coleman, a critical care pulmonologist at Northwestern Medicine and a member of Rankin’s extensive care team, says Rankin is not alone. “I think she is a testament of the younger generation of people who have ALS. ALS has always been kind of thought about as a disease that has affected older people, maybe in their 60s or 70s, but we’re seeing more and more young people being diagnosed with ALS,” Coleman said.

Sometimes it may seem as if half the population of the United States takes medication for high cholesterol levels. About 40 million Americans are taking statins such as atorvastatin (Lipitor and generic), lovastatin (Altoprev) and simvastatin (Zocor), which are by far the most commonly prescribed of all types of cholesterol drugs. Statins can be quite effective. Donald Lloyd-Jones, MD, shares advice on how to lower cholesterol. Regular consumption of unsaturated fats (olive oil, avocados, nuts, seeds) and soluble fiber (oats, barley, psyllium) may lower LDL cholesterol by about 7 to 15 mg/dL. Limit full-fat dairy, red meat and fried food because their saturated fat can raise LDL, says Donald Lloyd-Jones, chair of preventive medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Cardiovascular disease — the No. 1 cause of death among people 65 and older — is poised to become even more common in the years ahead, disproportionately affecting Black and Hispanic communities and exacting an enormous toll on the health and quality of life of older Americans. “Whatever focus we’ve had before on managing [cardiovascular]disease risk in Black and Hispanic Americans, we need to redouble our efforts,” said Clyde Yancy, chief of cardiology and vice dean for diversity and inclusion at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. He was not involved with the research.

The US Food and Drug Administration’s independent vaccine advisers voted Thursday in favor of recommending approval of a new vaccine to prevent infants from respiratory syncytial virus, known as RSV. RSV is the No. 1 reason for child hospitalizations in the US. In a single year, there are about 34 million episodes of RSV-associated lower respiratory tract infections in children under the age of 5, and about 10% need to go to the hospital for treatment, studies show. Nearly 80% of children hospitalized with RSV before age 2 had no underlying medical conditions, the FDA said in its presentation to the committee Thursday. Once at the hospital, most kids improve with supportive care, but there is no specific drug to treat RSV. In some cases, the infection can turn into pneumonia and become deadly. Dr. Bill Muller, an infectious disease physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, said anything that would decrease RSV infections would be a “welcome intervention.” Additionally, “Just decreasing the amount of disease that we see would really be an important advance in pediatric medicine,” said Muller, who is also a professor of pediatrics at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.