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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CNN
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Diabetes drug has heart and kidney benefits, researchers find
This study has the potential to influence medical practice, said Dr. Mark Molitch, professor of endocrinology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who was not involved in the new study but often has prescribed canagliflozin for his own patients. Canagliflozin, a medication used to treat type 2 diabetes, belongs to a class of drugs called sodium-glucose cotransporter-2, or SGLT2 inhibitors, which lower blood sugar by causing kidneys to remove sugar
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Chicago Tribune
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A Chicago man ran the Boston Marathon with a cow heart valve 11 weeks after open-heart surgery. 13 years later, he’s running for another milestone.
The long-distance runner from Chicago, who will attempt to become the first Illinois competitor to finish 40 straight Boston Marathons on Monday, had a question about a third option. “Do you have any cheetah valves?’’ Buciak asked Patrick McCarthy, Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s chief of cardiac surgery. “Because I’d really like to come out of this running faster.’’ Buciak sat in McCarthy’s office 13 years ago, a healthy 45-year-old man who got the shock of his life after a routine physical.
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Yahoo! News
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Here’s Why Allergies Are Worse This Year
What’s causing all this runny-nosed distress? “Climate change is making allergies worse,” Amiinah Y. Kung, MD, an allergy and immunology specialist at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, told POPSUGARin a recent piece by Emily Shiffer on seasonal allergies. “Winters aren’t as cold, so there isn’t much of a freeze, and with seasonal warming beginning earlier, it makes Spring particularly bad.”
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HealthDay
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Poverty Could Leave Its Mark on Genes
“First, we have known for a long time that [poverty] is a powerful determinant of health, but the underlying mechanisms through which our bodies ‘remember’ the experiences of poverty are not known,” said study author Thomas McDade. He directs the Laboratory for Human Biology Research at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. The findings also show that life experiences can shape genetic structure and function. “There is no nature vs. nurture,” McDade said in a Northwestern news release.
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Yahoo! News
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Most Women Don’t Need Yearly Mammograms, According to New Guidelines
The ACR’s statement also pointed out that the American Cancer Society, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, and the Society of Breast Imaging all call for average-risk women to begin getting mammograms at age 40. “What’s frustrating for us is these guidelines further muddy the waters and likely will have an effect on patients not getting screened when they should be,” Sarah Friedewald, M.D., chief of breast imaging at Northwestern Medicine, told NBC Chicago.
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U.S. News & World Report
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Prostate Cancer: To Treat or Not to Treat?
Dr. Edward M. Schaeffer, chair of the department of urology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, agrees. “Active surveillance has proven to be a safe and effective way to manage men with small amounts of minimally aggressive prostate cancer,” he says. “While under careful surveillance, the risk of developing advanced cancer is less than 0.5% over 10 years and the risk of death is effectively zero.”
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HealthDay
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Mick Jagger in Recovery After Heart Valve Procedure
If one of these valves gets smaller, blood can’t continue to flow without the heart working extremely hard, Otto told AHA News. And if a valve leaks, the heart has to pump extra blood to make up for it. Dr. Robert Bonow is professor of cardiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and co-author of those AHA guidelines. He said, “It’s a very delicate structure that with time can become a little bit thicker and get a little bit of scar tissue.” Risk factors are similar to those that lead to heart attacks, including high cholesterol, smoking, high blood pressure and diabetes, Bonow told AHA News. “But even people who have no risk factors, including athletes, can develop problems,” he said.
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Chicago Tribune
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Matteson heart transplant recipient will share her story at Alsip Library organ donor event
Her doctor, Northwestern Memorial Hospital cardiologist Kambiz Ghafourian, said that while Robinson suffered from a number of complications and underwent some serious procedures, including spending time on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine, the fact that she survived and is doing well is a testament to how far transplant surgery has come. “Her story had some unique features because she had a unique form of heart trouble called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which has unique features and made her severely limited,” Ghafourian said.
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The Washington Post
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Is jet lag good for you? Could be — at least it’s great for fruit flies
The study by researchers at Northwestern University found that fruit flies carrying a gene for Huntington’s disease appeared to receive a protective boost against the brain-damaging illness when researchers changed the insects’ sleep cycles in a way similar to jet lag. The team also found that silencing a circadian clock-controlled gene produced a similar benefit. “It seems counterintuitive, but we showed that a little bit of stress is good,” Ravi Allada, a physician who heads the neurobiology department at the university’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and Pathology, said in a statement. “We subtly manipulated the circadian clock, and that stress appears to be neuroprotective.”
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CNN
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Surgery tied to 44% increased survival in women with advanced breast cancer
n other words, more research is needed to determine whether those factors are influencing the new study’s findings, since databases — like the one used in the new study — can sometimes suffer from selection bias. “The question of a benefit for surgery can only be answered by a prospective randomized trial,” Morrow said.She added that another researcher in the field, Dr. Seema Khan, a professor of cancer research at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, has been leading such a trial.
“We eagerly await the results,” Morrow said.
