Media Coverage
The work done by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine faculty members (and even some students) is regularly highlighted in newspapers, online media outlets and more. Below you’ll find links to articles and videos of Feinberg in the news.
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US News & World Report
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Study Finds Better Way For Smartwatches to Track Health
Folks frequently use their smartwatches to monitor their daily step count, aiming to get enough physical activity to improve their health. But smartwatches are tracking another measure of health that could prove even more important, a new study suggests. Smartwatches also capture a person’s average daily heart rate, and dividing that by their daily number of steps provides a more reliable measure of a person’s heart fitness than either number on its own. “The metric we developed looks at how the heart responds to exercise, rather than exercise itself,” lead researcher Zhanlin Chen, a medical student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, said in a news release. “It’s a more meaningful metric because it gets at the core issue of capturing the heart’s capacity to adjust under stress as physical activity fluctuates throughout the day,” he added. “Our metric is a first attempt at capturing that with a wearable device.” For this new study, researchers analyzed data from nearly 7,000 American adults who provided Fitbit data and their electronic health records to an National Institutes of Health research program. Results also showed that elevated heart rate per step was more strongly associated with heart disease diagnoses than either daily heart rate or step count alone, researchers said. Based on these findings, researchers said that heart rate per step could be used to identify people who might benefit from more heart health screening, or from exercises that would improve their heart function. The metric is simple enough that people can calculate it on their own, Chen said, or it could potentially be included in smartwatch apps.
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Chicago Tribune
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Conquering fear was key for Oak Forest man who overcame double cancer diagnosis
An Oak Forest resident was diagnosed in early 2023 at Northwestern Medicine with an aggressive form of bladder cancer known as muscle-invasive high-grade urothelial carcinoma after noticing blood in his urine. Just six days later he learned he also had right lung adenocarcinoma, a type of lung cancer. It’s “not common” to have two types of cancer at the same time, said Yazan Numan, MD, medical oncologist at the Northwestern Medicine St. George Cancer Institute in Orland Park. He added that 5% of patients get diagnosed with two cancers, but it’s typically those who have a family history of cancer or a genetic disposition for it. The first stage of treatment was to surgically remove the mass on the bladder followed by several weeks of chemotherapy. That treatment had limited success, so in May 2023, Joshua Meeks, MD, PhD, a urologist at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, removed his bladder and prostate. Next, it was time to treat his lung cancer, which was done with radiation and chemotherapy starting in August 2023, followed by immunotherapy treatments in early 2024. The man said staying positive – and playing mind games with himself that everything was perfect – kept him going.
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Yahoo! News
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10 Everyday Habits That Are Harming Your Longevity The Most
Living a long, healthy life is a popular goal, but it’s not easy to achieve. It’s common for folks to develop conditions like dementia and chronic pain, in addition to mobility issues and cardiovascular problems, as they age. While certain uncontrollable factors (like genetics) play a major role in many of these issues, everyday habits can also contribute to a less-than-ideal aging process. And some of the habits you probably follow every day or every week are actually getting in the way of healthy aging and a long life. One important thing to have in your life is social relationships. “We know that socialization helps with your brain and with your longevity,” said Lee Lindquist, MD, MPH, MBA, chief of geriatrics at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. The more time you spend interacting with other people, the more it can benefit your life span. “I always joke… that you need to socialize with happy people, because we all have toxic people in our lives,” she said. Toxic people can bring anxiety and sadness, which won’t help you age well. “The more socialization you can do with people that bring you joy or bring you happiness, those are things that will definitely help you age healthy and age well and improve your longevity,” Lindquist said.
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HealthDay
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Food Insecurity Tied to Incident Cardiovascular Disease Events
Food insecurity is associated with incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) events, even when adjusting for sociodemographic factors, according to a study published online March 12 in JAMA Cardiology. Jenny Jia, MD, from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues examined whether food insecurity is associated with incident CVD across sociodemographic factors. The analysis included 3,616 participants in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study. The researchers found that individuals with food insecurity were more likely to self-identify as Black and report lower educational attainment. “Food insecurity may be an important social deprivation measure in clinical assessment of CVD risk,” the authors write. “Whether interventions to reduce food insecurity programs can potentially alleviate CVD should be further studied.”
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US News & World Report
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Researchers Find a Hint at How to Delay Alzheimer’s Symptoms. Now They Have to Prove It
An experimental treatment appears to delay Alzheimer’s symptoms in some people genetically destined to get the disease in their 40s or 50s, according to new findings from ongoing research now caught up in Trump administration funding delays. The early results — a scientific first — were published Wednesday even as study participants worried that politics could cut their access to a possible lifeline. Despite the study’s small size, “it’s incredibly important,” said Northwestern University neuroscientist David Gate, PhD, who wasn’t involved with the research. NIH’s focus expanded as researchers found more potential culprits. In 2013, NIH’s National Institute on Aging funded 14 trials of possible Alzheimer’s drugs, over a third targeting amyloid. By last fall, there were 68 drug trials and about 18% targeted amyloid. Northwestern’s Gate counts himself among scientists who “think amyloid isn’t everything,” but said nothing has invalidated the amyloid hypothesis. He recently used brain tissue preserved from an old amyloid study to learn how immune cells called microglia can clear those plaques and then switch to helping the brain heal, possible clues for improving today’s modest therapies.
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WGN Chicago
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Measles prevention: How the two-dose regimen works
About 90 percent of the US population has gotten their two dose regimen to protect against measles, mumps and rubella, but increasingly, the unvaccinated have been contracting the highly contagious, deadly disease. Northwestern University and Lurie Children’s pediatric infectious disease specialist Ravi Jhaveri, MD warns that without proper coverage, storm clouds ahead have him worried. “I like to have people think about vaccines as an umbrella, and the idea is an umbrella doesn’t necessarily keep you from getting wet but it keeps you from getting soaked,” he said. “We see periodic outbreaks of measles because it’s a very highly contagious agent and even modest drops in the amount of protection amongst communities can lead to outbreaks.” Decades of research has proven the MMR vaccine is 95 percent effective after the first dose. Experts say now it is more critical than ever to know protection level and potential threat. “More than 90 percent of parents are having their kids vaccinated on time with the appropriate doses by the time their kids enter kindergarten, and so I want to make sure we recognize them for the effort they are doing,” Dr. Jhaveri said. Further, “You should talk to your doctor about making sure you have up-to-date vaccines with the current guidance and we are airing on the side of extra doses,” Jhaveri said.
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Washington Post
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Five years since the pandemic began, covid may now be endemic, experts say
Five years after the pandemic began, covid-19 is now more consistent with an endemic disease, U.S. health experts said. It has become similar to influenza — an endemic disease — in terms of the risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death, experts said. The coronavirus, which causes covid, is now less deadly, though it is more transmissible and is expected to continue experiencing waves, some of which could be severe. If the coronavirus continues to devolve, there may come a time when boosters may not be needed annually, but the frequency needed is not clear, said Rob Murphy, MD, an infectious-disease expert at Northwestern University. While covid-related hospitalizations and deaths are down, surveillance will remain an important tool to keep the coronavirus under control, experts said.
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Yahoo! News
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5 years after the pandemic started, COVID-19 is still around. Masks? Not so much.
Has your COVID-era mask been a constant companion or is it collecting dust? Americans’ relationship with masking has been fraught (and politicized) since the beginning of the pandemic, a time when many balked at mandates to wear them while others wouldn’t leave their home without that level of protection. Mask requirements have largely ceased, and deciding whether to wear one is up to the individual. And some people do make that choice, particularly during cold and flu season, though polling suggests that masks are both less commonplace and a bit less polarizing these days. Rachel Amdur, an assistant professor of medicine at Northwestern University, tells Yahoo Life that while the U.S. is likely not at the same level of comfort with wearing masks in public as countries in Asia, it’s more common now to see people wearing masks in public here than it was before COVID arrived on the scene. Amdur says we “have a long way to go” with understanding how masks work to prevent respiratory illness. In the meantime, she says it’s probably a good idea to wear a mask in public if you have symptoms of an upper respiratory virus — such as nasal congestion, sore throat or fever — or if you’re immunocompromised and in a crowded public space.
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New York Times
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How Healthy Are Eggs?
To many nutrition experts, eggs are golden — one of the most accessible and affordable protein sources available. The scientific community used to be more divided about dietary cholesterol risks, said Philip Greenland, MD, a professor of cardiology and preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. But the Dietary Guidelines for Americans stopped including daily dietary cholesterol limits in 2015, and, in 2019, the American Heart Association published an advisory saying dietary cholesterol (the kind found in eggs) is not a major concern for heart disease. That doesn’t mean people should eat eggs in excess, Dr. Greenland said. Studies that have shown eggs don’t increase blood cholesterol mostly focused on moderate egg consumption — think one egg per day or two every other day, he said. One egg contains more than six grams of protein, which nutrition experts consider high, relative to its 70 total calories. No matter how you prepare them, eggs provide high-quality protein and nutrients, experts said.
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Yahoo! News
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5 years after the pandemic started, COVID-19 is still around. Masks? Not so much.
Even at the peak of the pandemic, how much people masked depended a lot on where they lived, and that’s likely still the case today. Rachel Amdur, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at Northwestern University, tells Yahoo Life that while the U.S. is likely not at the same level of comfort with wearing masks in public as countries in Asia, it’s more common now to see people wearing masks in public here than it was before COVID arrived on the scene. Still, Amdur says we “have a long way to go” with understanding how masks work to prevent respiratory illness. In the meantime, she says it’s probably a good idea to wear a mask in public if you have symptoms of an upper respiratory virus — such as nasal congestion, sore throat or fever — or if you’re immunocompromised and in a crowded public space.
