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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New York Times
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How Much Water Do I Need to Drink?
Whether you’re drinking from a trendy tumbler or a plain old glass, there is no “one-size-fits-all” answer to how much water you should drink in a day. Water is, of course, crucial for our survival. It helps us eliminate waste, maintain blood pressure, regulate body temperature and more. Some people need more water than others. People who are especially active — who have physically demanding jobs or who exercise a lot — lose more water through sweat and will need to compensate by drinking additional water, said George Chiampas, DO, an emergency medicine specialist at Northwestern Medicine and the chief medical officer for the U.S. Soccer Federation. People may also need to drink more if they live in hot climates, have larger bodies or lots of muscle mass, have loose stools, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or have had kidney stones or recurrent urinary tract infections, experts said. Most people are unlikely to drink too much water, but it is possible, especially among endurance athletes who drink lots of water quickly, Dr. Chiampas said. Doing so can disrupt the body’s balance of sodium and potassium and lead to potentially fatal water intoxication.
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WebMD
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Coronavirus in Context: Why “Caution Fatigue” May Be Causing More COVID Cases
Caution fatigue might be increasing cases of COVID-19. Jacqueline Gollan, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine said, “As people are striving to keep up with safety guidelines and keeping themselves safe, they may find it difficult to stay on high at-risk alert, and caution fatigue may emerge. And it’s really the low motivation or interest in taking safety precautions.” She continues to explain that when decreased sensitivity to warnings may occur, but taking regular precautions for COVID-19 is important. “It is always a good strategy to go with best expert advice, as well as to remind yourself, as much as you can, to instigate these in your daily routine. So hanging a mask on the doorknob of your front door would remind you to wear the mask when you go outside. Putting up little post-it notes in your home to remind you to wash your hands as you come in and out of your home environment, and so forth. I don’t think that we are bombarding people with too many messages about how to take precautions. In public health, being reminded is a good thing,” Gollan says.
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ABC 7 Chicago
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Cancer expert weighs in on Lloyd Austin prostate cancer diagnosis, statistics for minority groups
Prostate cancer is back in the headlines after word that U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was hospitalized with complications from prostate cancer surgery. Song Jiang, MD, PhD, urologic oncology expert at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, joined ABC 7 Chicago to provide insight on Secretary Lloyd Austin’s recent hospitalization. Jiang stated that the complication Secretary Austin may have experienced was a known possibility, though less than 5% of cases experience any complications. Statistics show that black men, like Secretary Austin, are 70 percent more likely than white men to develop the disease. Jiang stated, “For black men and men with a significant family history of prostate cancer, they indeed are at an elevated risk. As a sort of specialty, we recommend earlier screening for these men as early as their mid-40s to allow them to detect cancer earlier on.”
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WGN Chicago
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Dry January not working out? Try switching to ‘damp January’
If putting down the booze entirely hasn’t proven sustainable for you, health experts suggest taking a softer approach. “Damp January” may be easier to pull off, and yields many health benefits from cutting back on alcohol. The CDC and National Cancer Institute have also tied alcohol use to an elevated risk of several types of cancer, including mouth and throat, larynx, esophagus, colon, liver and breast. For many people, the idea of cutting back is less intimidating than cutting something out altogether. “The key thing with alcohol is moderation,” said Jeffrey Kopin, Chief Medical Officer for Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital and clinical assistant professor of general internal medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in an interview. “If you want to have a drink it’s OK, but don’t have too many drinks.” Heavy drinkers should talk to their doctor about best ways to cut back, said Berki. But for most people, even just small changes can make long lasting impacts. “Don’t overthink it,” said Kopin. “If you’re drinking in moderation, if you’re drinking in a way that’s appropriate for you, it’s fine. There’s no health reason not to do that, unless you have an underlying medical condition that says you shouldn’t be drinking at all.”
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New York Times
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I Have Covid. Should I Take Paxlovid?
As hospitalizations and deaths from Covid-19 rise, fueled by a fast-moving new variant that now accounts for a majority of U.S. cases, Paxlovid can help protect patients from some of the worst outcomes of the illness. Paxlovid consists of two medications, which, when taken together, stop the virus from replicating in your body. A recent study from the National Institutes of Health found that taking Paxlovid slashed the risk of death by 73 percent in people at high risk for severe disease. Some experts think the treatment might also reduce the risk of long Covid, although there is not yet definitive evidence for that, said Marc Sala, MD, co-director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Covid-19 Center in Chicago. But by reducing Covid symptoms in the first place, the medication may lower the chances that those symptoms linger. If you take Paxlovid, you need to take it within five days of developing symptoms and finish the full five-day course.
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TIME
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Is It Dangerous to Keep Getting COVID-19?
Getting COVID-19 today is much less scary and more common than it was three years ago. By now, many people have had it not just once, but two, three, or even more times. As cases continue to rise and more variants arrive on the scene, infectious-disease experts are warning that repeat infections could have cumulative, lasting effects. “There is some early evidence starting to show that if you had COVID-19, there can be all sorts of problems after getting infected” and reinfected, says Robert Murphy, MD, professor of medicine and executive director of the Havey Institute for Global Health at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “We are just at the beginning of learning about them.” Regardless of a person’s health status, each COVID-19 infection can raise the risk of developing blood clots, which can travel to the brain or lungs. That’s why Smith believes anyone who is eligible for antiviral drugs such as Paxlovid should take them, since controlling the virus as quickly as possible can reduce any potential long-term or lingering effects an infection can have on the body.
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US News & World Report
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U.S. FDA Finds No Evidence Yet Linking Weight-Loss Drugs to Suicidal Thoughts
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday its preliminary review did not find evidence that weight-loss drugs such as Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy were tied to suicidal thoughts and the agency will continue to study the issue. Still, the FDA, which has listed suicidal thoughts as a potential safety signal for such drugs, said it could not definitively rule out that a small risk may exist due to the limited data available. The idea of warnings regarding suicide ideation for weight loss treatments comes from older studies of drugs that worked differently than GLP-1s, said Robert Kushner, MD, professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “It’s kind of a legacy effect that is now applied to all medications for obesity,” Kushner said. The FDA said its months-long evaluation of clinical trials, and its public dashboard called the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) did not show a clear relationship between the drugs and suicidal thoughts or actions. Kushner added that it was prudent to continue monitoring people on GLP-1 medicines and that data from long-term use of the drugs could help alleviate any concerns. Healthcare providers like doctors should monitor their patients for new or worsening depression, suicidal thoughts, or any unusual changes in mood or behavior, consistent with the prescribing information for the drugs, the FDA said.
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The Washington Post
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The better cholesterol test you didn’t know you needed
For decades, primary physicians and cardiologists have focused on two numbers: LDL or low-density lipoproteins, known as “bad cholesterol,” and HDL or high-density lipoproteins, a.k.a. “good cholesterol.” The two numbers are considered key determinants of a patient’s cardiovascular disease risk. But a growing number of physicians and researchers are saying that it’s time to move beyond this timeworn emphasis on “good” or “bad” cholesterol. Decades’ worth of evidence show that measuring the number of apoB particles in the blood predicts cardiovascular risk far more accurately than the standard good-cholesterol/bad-cholesterol lipid panel, but cholesterol guidelines barely acknowledge its existence. Current guidelines only offer it as an option for certain high-risk patients. Proponents of apoB say it offers more specificity than non-HDL cholesterol — and helps doctors identify individuals who might otherwise slip through the cracks with “normal” cholesterol numbers. “It’s not that non-HDL or LDL-C are bad lipid markers – it’s that apoB is better,” says John Wilkins, MD, a professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “It’s easy enough to add to a standard lipid panel.” ApoB testing may be especially important in people younger than 40, Wilkins adds. He co-authored a 2016 study showing that younger people with high apoB levels but normal LDL were at greater risk for coronary artery calcification, a relatively advanced stage of heart disease. “There’s a very clear correlation between apoB levels and disease later in life,” he says.
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Chicago Tribune
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Chicago COVID-19 risk rises to ‘medium’ as hospital admissions increase
Chicago’s COVID-19 risk level has risen from “low” to “medium” for the first time since last January. Over the last week, 34 people per day have been admitted to Chicago hospitals because of complications with COVID-19, CDPH data shows. Hospitalizations have slowly risen since July, when admissions hit a pandemic low of three per day. COVID-related hospital admissions rose 11% in the last week, according to the CDPH. At Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s intensive care unit, medical director Susan Russell, MD has seen an uptick in COVID-19 patients. “It’s certainly not the surge levels we’ve seen in the past few years, but there is a definite increase,” Russell said. “I’m disappointed, but not surprised.” The hospital isn’t seeing the prolonged severe illness that many caretakers handled early in the pandemic, she said. But while hospitalized patients are generally having shorter ICU stays, many people — especially immunocompromised people — are still facing severe complications. “We are still seeing some very bad infections and people ending up on a ventilator,” Russell said. “It’s not the same volume as it was before, but we are seeing it.”
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WGN
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Changes coming to popular asthma medicine Flovent: What pharmacists want you to know
There is a major medication change in the new year many may not know about. A widely used drug for those with asthma is off the shelves and a local pharmacist says patients need to act fast to stay healthy. The switch to a generic will lower the cost, but Northwestern Medicine pharmacist and assistant professor of orthopaedic surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Sterling Elliott says there’s more to the story than economics. “It really has a huge percentage of the marketplace,” Elliott said. “The best things steroids do is help with inflammation, and asthma is inflammation in the respiratory tract.” Users will have to re-apply for coverage of essentially the same drug they’ve been taking all along. “It’s the same formulation. It’s certainly the same active steroid,” Elliot said. “It will be sent to the insurance carrier under a different identity and that identity needs to be approved and moved through the insurance process when they go to their local pharmacy to get the prescription.” Any delays could be dangerous – especially during respiratory virus season. “The trickle-down impact is you run the risk of asthma being more poorly controlled and you have some of those urgent asthma flare ups,” Elliot said. “It has the potential to send anyone to the ER if the flare up is that bad that it can’t be controlled at home.”
