Media Coverage

The Searls tried everything to help Avery: holistic doctors, medication, elimination diets, neurofeedback, acupuncture, supplements. Finally, they found the clinic at Northwestern Medicine where Mindy Meyer, a pediatric nurse practitioner, has treated hundreds of children with tics like Avery’s using Comprehensive Behavioral Intervention for Tics (CBIT). CBIT is a non-drug alternative treatment that uses behavioral therapy to teach children how to manage tics on their own. “We work through one tic at a time, and the kids drive it,” Meyer told TODAY Parents.

Dr. Stephen Hanauer, the medical director of Northwestern Medicine’s digestive health center, is going about it in a roundabout way. He’s studying patients already on marijuana. “Crohn’s disease, which is what I deal with, is one of the autoimmune diseases (of which) we do not yet know the cause or have a medical cure,” Hanauer said. “As soon as you tell a patient that you’ve got a condition that we don’t know what causes it and we don’t have a cure, they’re looking elsewhere. They’re looking for other approaches and that’s obviously nowadays using social media and going online, and there’s a great deal of usage of alternative therapies – not just cannabis.”

Why do cholesterol levels in kids matter? Research has shown that unhealthy levels in childhood might have consequences later in life, according to Dr. Amanda Perak, lead researcher on the study. “In adulthood, high LDL cholesterol is a key driver of atherosclerosis,” said Perak, a pediatric cardiologist at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. “But it’s been shown that the atherosclerosis process can begin in childhood.” Atherosclerosis is the buildup of “plaques” in the arteries. Those deposits — made up of cholesterol, calcium and other substances — cause the arteries to narrow and harden, eventually impeding blood flow.

“We’re in the middle of a huge movement in CBD research, but the Mount Sinai study is not the first,” said Dr. Danesh Alam, medical director of behavioral health at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, who was not involved in the study. “We’ve seen results like this from studies done in the heroin population in 2015-16. There are many chemicals found in marijuana including CBD that need to be studied further, but the restrictions on marijuana research have set us back.”

Tested against 6,716 cases with known diagnoses, the system was 94 percent accurate. Pitted against six expert radiologists, when no prior scan was available, the deep learning model beat the doctors: It had fewer false positives and false negatives. When an earlier scan was available, the system and the doctors were neck and neck.The ability to process vast amounts of data may make it possible for artificial intelligence to recognize subtle patterns that humans simply cannot see. “It may start out as something we can’t see, but that may open up new lines of inquiry,” said Dr. Mozziyar Etemadi, a research assistant professor of anesthesiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and an author of the study.

She points to the increase in the number of babies being born to women in their late 30s and early 40s, which she sees as a possible sign that the fertility rate could recover eventually. It’s possible that women who have been postponing pregnancy may have the babies they were planning to have and that could reverse the trend. Maybe, says Dr. Helen Kim. But maybe not. “As a fertility specialist, I worry that delaying childbearing will result in more fertility problems,” said Kim, an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Fertility — particularly women’s fertility — declines with age.

For the burnout guide, I spoke to Dr. Inger Burnett-Zeigler, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University, who recommends asking yourself this question if you feel like you’re at risk for parental burnout: “Do you actually have to do everything you think you have to do in this moment?” Sometimes taking 20 minutes to do something you find pleasurable, whether it’s watching trash TV, reading or talking to a friend, is a better use of your time than making something elaborate for preschool snack day.

It’s 3 p.m., I’ve been seeing patients for a few hours and I feel my focus fading. I need to stay sharp for those still to come, so I grab a snack and some coffee. This has become my afternoon ritual during my 20 years as a primary care doctor. Now, a new study confirms that my feared “3 o’clock fade” is real — and that it could affect patients’ health. According to the study, published in JAMA Network Open, doctors ordered fewer breast and colon cancer screenings for patients later in the day, compared to first thing in the morning. All the patients were due for screening, but ordering rates were highest for patients with appointments around 8 a.m. By the end of the afternoon, the rates were 10 percent to 15 percent lower. The probable reasons? Running late and decision fatigue.

If a doctor has spent much of the day talking to patients about cancer screening — and often hearing “no” — he or she might let it slide by day’s end. “This is a reminder that doctors are human, too,” said Dr. Jeffrey Linder, a professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “They’re laboring under the same psychological and fatigue constraints as everyone else.” Linder wrote an editorial accompanying the study, published May 10 in the journal JAMA Network Open. “Not everyone can get an 8 a.m. appointment,” Linder pointed out. But, he said, it’s good for doctors and patients to be aware that time of day might affect their care.

“We know that African American women are disproportionally affected by the HIV epidemic in the United States, and the interventions that have been laid out have not impacted this group in the same way it has males and nonblack women,” said Dr. Michael Angarone, assistant professor in the division of infectious diseases at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The researchers looked at HIV data collected over a seven-year period and used a model to measure the disparity among different groups called the population attributable proportion, or PAP. They modeled the reductions in new HIV infections that would have occurred if the rate of infections among black women were the same as white women. They found that the PAP decreased from 0.75 in 2010 to 0.70 in 2016.