Media Coverage

Heart palpitations can sometimes happen after eating. “When you eat, the body increases blood flow to the digestive system, which can lead to an increase in heart rate,” says Dr. Allison Zielinski, a cardiologist and co-director of the sports cardiology program at Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute in Chicago.

Heart disease remains the most common cause of death in the United States, and yet it is largely preventable. CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta shares his own family history of heart disease and talks with cardiologist Dr. Clyde Yancy about what we can do to keep our hearts healthy, even if our genes make us more disposed to heart issues.

There are also differences in how we manage our emotions, something most workers have had to deal with during the coronavirus pandemic. “We’ve all been under a lot of stress and anxiety for the past year,” said Borna Bonakdarpour, a behavioral neurologist and assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “That, by itself, affects our focus.”

The torrent of fury online was familiar to experts in women’s health. “They should be angry — women’s health just does not get equal attention,” said Dr. Eve Feinberg, a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist at Northwestern University. “There’s a huge sex bias in all of medicine.”

“It’s too soon. We need to wait a little bit longer,” said Dr. Melissa Simon, vice chair of research at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “It’s not [a] health equity approach, which our leaders in CDC and across the country promised they would use a health equity lens, and this is not.”

Studies show that 26 percent of Black patients waiting for an organ receive one and the number is nearly double for white patients. Dr. Dinee Simpson is one of 10 Black, female transplant surgeons practicing in the U.S. She started the first and only program in the country that helps African Americans receive organs.

At Northwestern Medicine Prentice Women’s Hospital, for the first time anyone at the facility can remember, a team of OB-GYN medical residents is all Black and all female. The five doctors work together daily, treating patients and learning in virtual programs as they work toward becoming OB-GYNs.

“I was quite surprised by those numbers,” said researcher Natalie A. Cameron. “Our rates and trends were mostly driven by overweight and obesity. However, up to 4% to 5% of women in some states had two or more risk factors, demonstrating an important contribution of diabetes and hypertension to unfavorable health prior to pregnancy.”

The tool also allowed researchers to independently control multiple devices — and multiple animals — at once. Dr. Rogers and Dr. Kozorovitskiy began looking for a way to test it. Dr. Kozorovitskiy had seen the Cell study showing that interacting mice produce synchronies in the medial prefrontal cortex. Perhaps, she thought, the optogenetic device could test the converse relationship: If two animals’ brains were synchronized, would the animals become more social?

CFS symptoms have cropped up in many patients recovering from COVID-19 infection, said Dr. Colin Franz, a clinician-scientist with the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab at Northwestern Medicine and director of the regenerative neurorehabilitation laboratory at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, both in Chicago.