Media Coverage

Working with human lung tissue and mice, Northwestern University researchers found that metformin reduces pollution-triggered inflammation linked to heart attack and stroke. “These findings suggest metformin as a potential therapy to prevent some of the premature deaths attributable to air pollution exposure worldwide,” co-lead author Dr. Scott Budinger said in a university news release. “The simplest next step would be to validate our study with metformin in people in China or other places where exposure to high levels of air pollution are common to see if it reduces inflammation,” said Budinger, chief of pulmonary and critical care at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

“Unfortunately, at this time we have no scientific evidence on the long-term health effects of e-cigarettes, especially given the unknown effects of the aerosols and flavorings in e-cigarette liquids,” said Dr. Thanh-Huyen Vu, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University in Chicago. However, researchers know plenty about nicotine. The drug “is well known to be addictive and toxic, and to have adverse effects on the cardiovascular system and on health in general,” Vu said. And that’s enough to raise concerns about teenagers’ e-cigarette use, she added.

“Recognizing that these disparities exist, it behooves us to figure out how to decrease the disparities,” said Dr. Alan Peaceman, chief of maternal-fetal medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and chief of obstetrics at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “The numbers here are concerningly high.” Women of any race or ethnicity who had a chronic health condition, such as asthma, diabetes, kidney disease or high blood pressure, before giving birth were at a higher risk of severe delivery-related complications. Black women who had two or more chronic health problems were nearly three times as likely as those with none to have a severe complication related to birth, the study found.

Her experience is a familiar one, says Dr. Lee Lindquist, a geriatrician at Northwestern Medicine. “I see patients in my clinic who could definitely use home support … and they’ll absolutely refuse it,” Lindquist said. “It drives me nuts because you see other people who are accepting of services and flourishing.” Curious as to why some older adults refuse to accept help, researchers went straight to the source. “We decided let’s ask seniors, ‘Why wouldn’t you want help in the home? And what could we say to help you accept help?’” Lindquist said.

In fiscal 2017, Northwestern set an all-time university record for annual research funding, bringing in more than $676.5 million, up 4 percent from the year before and 54 percent greater than a decade ago. Recent grants include the National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarding $11.5 million to the university’s Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center to develop new treatments for patients with glioblastoma, the most common and deadly type of brain tumor. The NEST (Newborn Essential Solutions and Technologies) project – a collaboration with Rice University, the University of Malawi and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine – received $15 million from the MacArthur Foundation to develop technologies that will help improve the survival of newborns in developing African nations.

The big advantage of this kind of study is that “in combining information across so many prior studies you’re really getting at one of the best estimates of the disparity of suicide risk due to sexual orientation,” said Brian Mustanski, director of the Institute for Sexual and Gender Health and Well Being at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “We already knew (LGBT) teens were at risk, but this study gives a more precise estimate of that risk.” Mustanski has followed a group of young people for over a decade. He has found that the accumulation of experiences with victimization and bullying can lead to depression and feelings of hopelessness. “And those increase the risk for suicide,” said Mustanski who was not affiliated with the new study.

“These are usually relaxation strategies, white noise, meditation,” Jason Ong, an associate professor of neurology specializing in sleep at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. He studies non-pharmacological treatments for various sleep disorders and treats patients at the university’s Sleep Medicine clinic. “It’s not that there’s something wrong with those apps. It’s a reasonable first thing to try.” But, he adds, these kinds of apps aren’t based on scientifically-proven solutions, and they don’t really fix the problem of why someone is not sleeping.

It’s not clear how many of those prescriptions were actually inappropriate, said lead researcher Dr. Jeffrey Linder, of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. His team looked at patient records, and “bad coding” could be part of the problem, Linder explained. He was referring to the system doctors use for recording diagnoses. Still, the findings are concerning, Linder said. They suggest that some doctors are still doling out antibiotics too readily — probably, in part, because they assume patients want them, according to Linder.

“I’m at a level of very concerned,” said Dr. Jeffrey Linder, lead author of the study and chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. He presented early results from his work at the IDWeek conference at Moscone Center. That antibiotics are often inappropriately prescribed is not new information. But the Northwestern study is among the first to carefully describe prescribing behaviors in outpatient settings, which are the source of roughly 80 percent of all antibiotic prescriptions. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the past has estimated that a third of outpatient prescriptions are unnecessary.

Researchers found that of more than 500,000 antibiotic prescriptions they analyzed, nearly half were written without an infection-related diagnosis. And about 20 percent were given without an office visit — usually over the phone. It’s not clear how many of those prescriptions were actually inappropriate, said lead researcher Dr. Jeffrey Linder, of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.