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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The Washington Post
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For students with food allergies, college campuses can be hazardous
Living with a food allergy at home is challenging under the best of circumstances. But college students say navigating food allergies on campus is particularly fraught. Nearly a dozen current and recent college students with food allergies shared stories of encountering allergens in campus dining halls, during dorm-life shenanigans and at off-campus events. “They’re all growing up and taking their food allergies into college,” said Ruchi Gupta, MD, MPH, a physician and the founding director of the Center for Food Allergy and Asthma Research (CFAAR) at Northwestern Medicine. “We’re talking about 10 percent of a college population learning how to be independent for the first time, making food choices on their own, and that coinciding with wanting to be accepted, make friends, eat out and go to parties.” The true scope of the problem is unknown, Gupta said, partly because college students are not required to declare their food allergies on applications. It is even harder to quantify how many of them experience anaphylaxis — a life-threatening allergic reaction — while on campus.
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Fox 32 Chicago
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Northwestern Medicine launches cultural program for Spanish-speaking lung and thoracic disease patients
Northwestern Medicine is launching a new cultural program for patients with lung and thoracic diseases. Doctors say the program focuses on patients who prefer to communicate in Spanish and offers culturally competent medical care. “The language barrier is a significant limitation for patients with respiratory disease and thoracic disease to seek health care and to complete the treatments that are recommended. So what we think, what we want to provide with this program, is to take the language barrier out of the equation,” said Dr. Diego Avella Patino, Northwestern Medicine Hispanic Program at Canning Thoracic Institute. Every team member working with the program speaks Spanish, and they have a dedicated phone line for patients who prefer to communicate in Spanish.
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WebMD
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Who Gets Wegovy? (Hint: Not Always Those Who Need it Most)
Semaglutide is better known as the active ingredient in a number of brand-name drugs (Ozempic, Rybelsus, and Wegovy). Sometimes called GLP-1 agonists, doctors use these medications at different doses to treat various health conditions, including obesity and type 2 diabetes. Research shows people with overweight or obesity can lower their weight by 12% to 15% with certain doses of semaglutide. The drug acts on brain signals, which seems to be why many people feel full faster and with less food while they take it. However, many government-sponsored plans like Medicare don’t cover weight loss drugs at all when used for obesity alone. This lack of access can be frustrating for everyone, but may take a greater toll on certain historically marginalized groups and people of color – people like Martinez, who is Hispanic of Puerto Rican descent. There are a number of reasons for this, says Veronica Johnson, MD, an obesity medicine specialist at Northwestern Medicine and assistant professor of general internal medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. (Johnson has consulted with Novo Nordisk, the U.S. producer of semaglutide.)
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WBEZ Chicago
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Northwestern doctors say long COVID detected even after patients tested negative
Ibrahim is among an estimated 1 in 13 adults in the United States who suffered from long-term COVID-19 effects and symptoms, which also included brain fog, migraines and fatigue. Ibrahim is one of potentially millions of people across the U.S. who showed so-called long-COVID symptoms as far back as 2020 even though she initially tested negative for the virus back then, Northwestern University researchers say in a new study. Researchers found people who complained of symptoms consistent with long COVID but were not formally diagnosed during their infection. The Northwestern Medicine Neuro COVID-19 Clinic did not deny appointments to those who had long-COVID symptoms, says Dr. Igor Koralnik, who oversees the clinic and led the research. The study included 29 patients, mostly females. Women appear to be affected by autoimmune diseases and responses more often than men, leading to symptoms consistent with long-COVID effects, Koralnik said.
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Chicago Tribune
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Can AC protect against wildfire smoke? How Chicagoans can stay safe from bad air while indoors.
As climate change increases the severity and frequency of wildfires in North America, experts say many Americans are at risk of experiencing one in their lifetime. But even more may be affected by the unhealthy air quality from the smoke the fires produce. To complicate matters further, experts say staying indoors with the windows closed is only the first step. Chicagoans should purchase an air purifier with HEPA filters, said Ravi Kalhan, MD, a pulmonologist at Northwestern Medicine. “You could think of these filters like putting a giant N95 mask on your room, and having all the air pass through it,” Kalhan said. Other kinds of air purifiers — such as those that rely on ultraviolet light or ionizers — won’t help with pollution caused by wildfire smoke, Kalhan said. And air purifiers with ionizers can be dangerous for people with lung conditions, he said.
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Chicago Tribune
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Chicago COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations on the rise; Northwestern team warns of undiagnosed long-COVID consequences
Chicago’s COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are continuing to steadily rise after reaching pandemic lows earlier this summer. City health officials say the rise doesn’t present an urgent threat to the public, but shows the coronavirus is still spreading and merits attention. new study released Wednesday by the center suggests millions of people who never tested positive for COVID-19 may have such lingering symptoms. Because they don’t have a positive test to prove they got sick, they might miss out on care, the center’s co-director Igor Koralnik, MD, professor of neurology (neuro-infectious disease and global neurology) at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine said. “There is a large population in the U.S. and world who are the negative long-haulers. Those patients have been rejected and stigmatized because they have all the symptoms, but they don’t have a positive COVID test,” Koralnik said. Most post-COVID clinics don’t accept people who haven’t gotten positive tests, Koralnik said. Research on long COVID often excludes them too, he said.
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WebMD
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Some People With Long COVID Tested Negative for COVID-19
Some cases of long COVID-19 might be going unidentified because the patient’s initial infection wasn’t detected. That’s according to a small, new study published in Neurology, Neuroimmunology & Neuroinflammation. “We estimated that there were approximately 10 million people in the first year of the pandemic in the U.S. who are in this predicament: who got Covid, got long Covid, but tested negative for Covid,” said Igor Koralnik, MD, who led the study and is the chief of the division of neuroinfectious diseases and global neurology at Northwestern Medicine. These so-called “negative long-haulers” should be included in trials and studies on long COVID, Koralnik said. They currently are not.
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TODAY
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Trying to lose weight? Why full-fat dairy may help you hit your goal
For decades, nutrition experts have steered Americans away from whole milk and other full-fat dairy products, but research over the past decade or so should lead to a change in that advice, some experts say. While there may be some fats that can be harmful to health, “not all fat is created equal,” Linda Van Horn, PhD, chief of nutrition at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said. “Dairy fat is likely very different from beef or chicken fat,” she adds. “It may very well be that it has different biological influences that we don’t know about yet. However, data we have to suggest that butter is the exception in that it appears to have an adverse influence on health.”
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ABC 7 Chicago
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Northwestern studies long COVID patients who never tested positive
A woman was exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms, however she continually tested negative. She and nearly 30 other patients with long COVID symptoms, who tested negative for the virus, took part in a new study at Northwestern Medicine’s COVID-19 clinic. “We estimate that during the first year of the pandemic, about 10 million people in the U.S. were in this predicament, that they were exposed to SARS-CoV-2, developed COVID-19 and thereafter developed long COVID symptoms, but never had a positive test because they could not be tested in time,” said Igor Koralnik, MD chief of neuro-infectious diseases at Northwestern Medicine. Koralnik said post-COVID clinics shouldn’t require a positive COVID-19 test in order to provide care to long-haulers. “Those people, unfortunately, have been rejected, stigmatized, sometimes gaslighted, even by the medical establishment, because they did not have a positive COVID-19 test,” he said. Koralnik said more research is needed to determine what causes long COVID and how to effectively treat its many symptoms.
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Fox 32 Chicago
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New study suggests some negative COVID tests weren’t accurate
New research suggests that some people who had previously tested negative for COVID may not have been negative at all. This new information is now changing the way doctors approach long-term COVID today. The research is newly published by Northwestern Medicine and those behind it say it shows that long-term COVID clinics shouldn’t require a past positive COVID test to provide long-haul care. It is estimated that nearly 10 million Americans are dealing with long-term COVID symptoms without an official COVID diagnosis. Researchers say that could be partly attributed to the limited availability of testing at the beginning of the pandemic.
