“We are still learning,” agrees Alan Peaceman, MD, chief of maternal fetal medicine in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University outside Chicago. Several new studies are looking to change that by providing clear scientific data aimed at finding the best treatment and care for women during pregnancy and childbirth[…]“Obstetrics was traditionally taught as an apprenticeship based on experience and information passed down, but without a whole lot of science involved. Most of medicine was practiced that way, but obstetrics probably longer than it should until we started doing randomized clinical trials,” Peaceman explains.

Most of us get our flu shots in the fall, noted Dr. Michael Ison, a professor in the division of infectious diseases at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “That is when rhinoviruses are circulating,” he added. “Most people think a cold is just a stuffy nose,” Ison said. “But you can get really sick from a cold. In fact, many viruses can make you as sick as the flu does.”

“Unfortunately, at this time we have no scientific evidence on the long-term health effects of e-cigarettes, especially given the unknown effects of the aerosols and flavorings in e-cigarette liquids,” said Dr. Thanh-Huyen Vu, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University in Chicago. However, researchers know plenty about nicotine. The drug “is well known to be addictive and toxic, and to have adverse effects on the cardiovascular system and on health in general,” Vu said. And that’s enough to raise concerns about teenagers’ e-cigarette use, she added.

“Recognizing that these disparities exist, it behooves us to figure out how to decrease the disparities,” said Dr. Alan Peaceman, chief of maternal-fetal medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and chief of obstetrics at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “The numbers here are concerningly high.” Women of any race or ethnicity who had a chronic health condition, such as asthma, diabetes, kidney disease or high blood pressure, before giving birth were at a higher risk of severe delivery-related complications. Black women who had two or more chronic health problems were nearly three times as likely as those with none to have a severe complication related to birth, the study found.

Her experience is a familiar one, says Dr. Lee Lindquist, a geriatrician at Northwestern Medicine. “I see patients in my clinic who could definitely use home support … and they’ll absolutely refuse it,” Lindquist said. “It drives me nuts because you see other people who are accepting of services and flourishing.” Curious as to why some older adults refuse to accept help, researchers went straight to the source. “We decided let’s ask seniors, ‘Why wouldn’t you want help in the home? And what could we say to help you accept help?’” Lindquist said.

It’s not clear how many of those prescriptions were actually inappropriate, said lead researcher Dr. Jeffrey Linder, of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. His team looked at patient records, and “bad coding” could be part of the problem, Linder explained. He was referring to the system doctors use for recording diagnoses. Still, the findings are concerning, Linder said. They suggest that some doctors are still doling out antibiotics too readily — probably, in part, because they assume patients want them, according to Linder.