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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Chicago Tribune
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Snapshot of food insecurity in Illinois and the US
In March, the Trump administration paused funding for The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), a federal program under USDA that purchased food from farmers and sent it to food banks. Farmers and nonprofits have suffered alike from the loss of federal funding. The cut diminished 40% of the food the Northern Illinois Food Bank received from TEFAP, according to Robert Desio, senior manager of public policy and benefits for the Northern Illinois Food Bank. According to Lindsay Allen, PhD, a health economist and policy researcher at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, the country is still dealing with supply chain issues from COVID-19. Trump’s tariffs, climate change and the war in Ukraine are making food prices more expensive nationwide, too. Many people in the “SNAP gap” and on SNAP benefits depend on food pantries to supplement the limited food they can afford. Because of the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” even more people will need help from nonprofit food banks and pantries.
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Chicago Tribune
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Northwestern Medicine research finding opens the door to a viral link to Parkinson’s disease
A Northwestern Medicine research lab has found a usually harmless virus in brain samples from Parkinson’s patients. The idea that Parkinson’s could be linked to a virus had been theorized for years, but this is the first study to pinpoint a specific virus as more common in Parkinson’s patients. “The message that we want to give to the general public is, it opens a new field of investigation, something that we didn’t know about,” said Igor Koralnik, MD, Northwestern’s chief of neuroinfectious diseases and global neurology and lead author of the study. Before this study, Hanson said, HPgV had not been found in human brain tissue. It was understood to primarily “live” in blood. “For this virus to be present in the brain, there must be a reason for that,” Koralnik said. It’s possible that this is why Parkinson’s risk increases with age, Bega said. The longer you live, the more of these “hits” you take, as you encounter different Parkinson’s risk factors throughout your life. “I always caution people who try to blame their Parkinson’s on one thing,” he said. “Rest assured, it’s never one thing that you could have done or should have done differently.”
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US News & World Report
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ER Opioid Prescriptions For Low Back Pain Cut In Half
The rate of ER opioid prescriptions for back pain fell by more than half between 2016 and 2022, researchers reported July 12 in the Annals of Emergency Medicine. Back in 2016, nearly a third of these visits (32%) resulted in a prescription for opioid painkillers, researchers found. That had decreased to more than 13% of visits by 2022, researchers said. “The decline in opioid prescribing shows physicians are responding to evidence and changing their practice at a time of growing awareness of the opioid epidemic,” lead researcher Howard Kim, an emergency physician at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, said in a news release. Patients were in considerable pain when they sought help, with an average pain score of more than 7 out of 10, researchers found. On average, they waited about 37 minutes before a doctor saw them, and spent about four hours in the ER. Results show that NSAIDs like ibuprofen are now the prescription painkiller of choice, provided to nearly 29% of low back pain patients in the ER. Many back pain patients who go to the ER are still getting unnecessary X-rays, results show. About 37% of patients got an X-ray in 2022, about the same proportion as in 2015. The highest rate of X-rays, nearly 44% of cases, occurred in 2021. “We still have some progress to be made in finding ways to encourage appropriate use of X-rays for low back pain,” Kim said. “This is a hard problem to tackle, as the decision to order an X-ray is complex and driven by both clinician and patient factors.”
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Huffington Post
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Here’s What You Should Do If There’s A Measles Case In Your Area
The measles outbreak in West Texas and beyond is only getting worse. Two unvaccinated children have died of the virus, and measles cases are the highest they’ve been in 33 years. It’s natural to be scared of this highly contagious virus, which in rare cases can cause death and severe illness, but not everyone has to have the same level of worry. (Yes, vaccination is key for your safety.) If you aren’t sure of your vaccine history, you have a few choices. It’s a scary time to not be sure if you’re fully vaccinated against measles, but there are a couple of things you can do, according to Michael Angarone, DO, an associate professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. First, you can ask your doctor to run a blood test to see if you have antibodies to measles, he said. If you do have antibodies, that means you’re protected. If you don’t, you can set up an appointment for your shot.If you can’t get the blood test, “The other option is to just get vaccinated. There is not harm in getting an extra dose of the MMR vaccine as an adult,” Angarone noted.
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HealthDay
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A Usually “Harmless Virus” May Trigger or Contribute to Parkinson’s Disease
A usually harmless virus might be an environmental trigger or contributor to Parkinson’s disease, a new study suggests. Researchers at Northwestern Medicine developed a tool called ‘ViroFind,’ which detects 565 viruses known to infect humans in a single assay or test. They analyzed post-mortem brain samples from 10 people with Parkinson’s disease and 14 control subjects who died from other causes. “Using this assay, we found a specific virus called the human pegivirus, which is otherwise not known to cause disease, to be present in half of the patients’ brains who had Parkinson’s disease compared to none of those control brain patients.” Igor Koralnik, MD, lead author of the study, says the infected brains exhibited more advanced disease, including increased tau pathology and altered levels of certain brain proteins. Koralnik stresses this is an exploratory study. “It doesn’t mean that those viruses cause the disease, but it suggests that they may be implicated on how the immune system reacts to those viruses that may be associated with the Parkinson’s disease.” Parkinson’s disease affects more than one million people in the United States.
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US News & World Report
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‘Harmless’ Virus Might Trigger Parkinson’s Disease, Researchers Say
A common virus once thought harmless to humans might be linked to Parkinson’s disease, a new study says. The germ, Human Pegivirus (HPgV), was found in half the autopsied brains of patients with Parkinson’s, but not in any brains from healthy people, researchers reported July 8 in the journal JCI Insight. “HPgV is a common, symptomless infection previously not known to frequently infect the brain,” lead researcher Igor Koralnik, MD, chief of neuroinfectious diseases and global neurology at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, said in a news release. “We were surprised to find it in the brains of Parkinson’s patients at such high frequency and not in the controls.” The virus also appeared to prompt different responses from people’s immune systems, depending on their genetics, Koralnik said. “This suggests it could be an environmental factor that interacts with the body in ways we didn’t realize before,” Koralnik said. “For a virus that was thought to be harmless, these findings suggest it may have important effects, in the context of Parkinson’s disease. It may influence how Parkinson’s develops, especially in people with certain genetic backgrounds.”
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Fox News
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Never smoked? You could still be at risk of developing lung cancer, doctors warn
Lung cancer, the second-most common cancer in the U.S., is often associated with smoking — but even those who have never had a cigarette could be at risk of the deadly disease. While it’s true that those who smoke face a much higher risk, up to 20% of lung cancers affect people who have never smoked or have smoked fewer than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Mohamed Abazeed, MD, PhD, chair of radiation oncology and the William N. Brand Professor at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, agrees that the share of lung cancers diagnosed in never-smokers is increasing, particularly among women and patients of Asian ancestry. “While overall incidence is declining due to reduced smoking rates, the relative share of never-smokers is growing and is reflected in clinical practice, where we increasingly diagnose patients without a traditional smoking history,” he told Fox News Digital. Some of the biggest non-smoking risk factors for lung cancer include ambient air pollution and secondhand smoke, according to Abazeed. “Some of these, like radon and air quality, can be addressed at the household or policy level,” Abazeed said.
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TIME
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What to Do About Your Red, Itchy Eyes
Allergic conjunctivitis is triggered by airborne allergens, like pollen that wafts off trees, grasses, and weeds. Minimizing contact with allergens is the best way to protect your eyes. You can do that by staying inside, keeping your windows shut, and using your A/C if you have access to one. It’s also a good idea to turn off ceiling fans. “They get very, very dusty, and nobody ever really climbs up there and wipes the top of the blades,” says Michelle Andreoli, MD, a clinical spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology and an ophthalmologist at Northwestern Medicine. “You lay there all night, and your ceiling fan is blowing allergens and dust over your eyelid skin, which will make you itchy.” Keep your pillowcases clean, too—they’re probably harboring lots of allergens that seeped off your skin and hair. If you don’t feel like washing your bedding, Andreoli suggests wrapping your pillow in a fresh T-shirt every night. “You can rip it off in the morning and throw it in the machine,” she says. “It seems less cumbersome than owning seven pillowcases and changing them every day.”
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New York Post
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Seemingly harmless, symptomless virus may actually cause Parkinson’s disease: study
While some cases of Parkinson’s disease are genetic, the vast majority have no known cause. Now, scientists have discovered that a virus that has flown under the radar for years might be a potential contributor to the neurodegenerative disorder. “We wanted to investigate potential environmental factors – such as viruses – that might contribute to Parkinson’s disease,” Igor Koralnik, MD, the lead author of the study and chief of neuroinfectious diseases and global neurology at Northwestern Medicine, said in a press release. “Using a tool called ‘ViroFind,’ we analyzed post-mortem brain samples from individuals with Parkinson’s and from those who died of other causes. We searched for all known human-infecting viruses to identify any differences between the two groups,” he noted. The findings — published Tuesday in the journal JCI Insight — could be a major breakthrough in unlocking some of the factors that lead to this tricky disease and provide new insight into a virus that was previously considered benign.
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Chicago Tribune
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Northwestern Medicine launches program for patients with obesity concerns who are planning a pregnancy
Northwestern Medicine has launched a program to help patients who have concerns related to obesity and are planning a pregnancy. Women with higher levels of body fat sometimes struggle to conceive and can face greater health risks during pregnancy. Christina Boots, MD, MSCI, a reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist and one of the clinicians in the program, estimates that about one-third of her infertility patients struggle with obesity. “There’s many more beyond that, who maybe don’t meet the criteria for obesity, but are struggling with overweight or insulin resistance and prediabetes or any other metabolic health dysfunction that could be optimized before we go forward,” she said. Boots said she and other physicians in the program have been unofficially working with patients on obesity concerns related to pregnancy for a few years. By making it an official program within Northwestern Medicine, clinicians are able to dedicate time to see these patients alongside their usual caseloads. “We’re just making sure that we’re blocking out time so that there’s always an opportunity for women to get in.” The program currently has four clinicians. Boots addresses how a higher BMI may affect fertility. Veronica Johnson, MD, an internal medicine practitioner with a specialty in obesity medicine, primarily focuses on preconception weight loss. Jacqueline Hairston, MD and Michelle Kominiarek, MD, as the two maternal-fetal medicine specialists, address patients who are close to becoming or are already pregnant. “The whole purpose of this is to address their concerns, and not to say, ‘Hey, you need to lose a bunch of weight,’” Boots said. “All the women in the program believe that there can be health at every size, and none of us believe that you must lose weight in order to get pregnant or to have a healthy pregnancy at all.”
