Media Coverage

The number of U.S. children allergic to peanuts has increased by 21 percent since 2010, with nearly 2.5 percent of youngsters now having this type of allergy, a new study has found. “According to our data, the risk of peanut allergy was nearly double among black children relative to white children,” study co-author Christopher Warren said in a news release from the college. Study lead author Dr. Ruchi Gupta
acknowledged that peanut and other food allergies can be “very challenging for children and families,” but “the good news is that parents now have a way to potentially prevent peanut allergy by introducing peanut products to infants early after assessing risk with their pediatrician and allergist.” Both Gupta and Warren are researchers from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

“Crispr editing of RNA creates more opportunities for things we can do therapeutically,” says Elizabeth McNally , director of the Center for Genetic Medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who wasn’t involved in the study but is working on efforts to use the Crispr system to treat forms of muscular dystrophy and other conditions.

I moved from Philadelphia to Chicago to run the program he co-directs: the Lurie Cancer Center OncoSET of Northwestern University at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. This new initiative combines genomic sequencing and molecular analysis with standard pathology to identify new, individually tailored treatments and clinical trials for patients whose cancers are resistant to traditional therapies. Patients like me.

“I think it’s a phenomenal idea,” said Dr. Sarah Friedewald, an oncologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “Being competitive just helps your endorphins and gets your body ready to fight the next fight,” Friedewald said.

Being open after errors may also help avoid litigation, noted Dr. Gary Noskin , senior vice president and chief medical officer of Northwestern Memorial Hospital and a researcher at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “Traditionally, hospitals follow a ‘deny and defend’ strategy providing a paucity of information to patients,” Noskin, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

Those are good but hard-to-answer questions, says Dr. Shuai Xu, a dermatologist affiliated with Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. You see, moisturizers and their advertised claims, like all other cosmetic and personal care products, are at best loosely regulated, dependent almost entirely on the integrity of manufacturers to market a safe, effective product and on consumers to holler loudly when a product is neither. Furthermore, as Dr. Jonathan I. Silverberg, who directs Northwestern’s Contact Dermatitis Clinic and Eczema Center, explained, “Much of the labeling of products as hypoallergenic is nonsense. If you use a product long or often enough, you can become vulnerable to an allergic reaction. It’s not that the product is mislabeled – it’s that you can become allergic to almost anything, especially if you have a predisposition.”

To a lesser extent, it’s also all those people who just can’t turn off the iPad at night and have to drag themselves out of bed in the morning. Fred Turek , is a circadian scientist at Northwestern University. FRED TUREK: These people are totally out of synchrony. When their body clock is telling them to go to sleep, they have to be awake. And then when they try to go to sleep, their body clock is saying, hey, time to get up.

In recent years, some plastic surgeons have started posting videos of their surgeries on social media in hopes of informing and attracting new patients. But in some cases, their antics seem designed more for entertainment than education, raising ethical questions, according to a new paper from Northwestern Medicine researchers published in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

In recent years, some plastic surgeons have started posting videos of their surgeries on social media in hopes of informing and attracting new patients. But in some cases, their antics seem designed more for entertainment than education, raising ethical questions, according to a new paper from Northwestern Medicine researchers published in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

A. Vania Apkarian, a pain researcher at Northwestern University who also uses brain imaging techniques, but was not involved in the research, says that the study advances our understanding about how our biases influence our healthcare. “We have assumed for many years that the brain would control pain perception at many different levels and that expectations would change those things,” he tells Newsweek. This study is the first to show the entire circuitry linking expectations and perceptions, Apkarian explained.