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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HealthDay
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For Some, ‘Tis the Season for Loneliness. Experts Offer Tips to Stay Connected
For many, the holidays are a time when you connect with others and share time with loved ones. But for some, the holidays are a painful exercise in loneliness. While a Northwestern Medicine study published last spring found loneliness is more prevalent in both younger and older adults, those feelings intensify around the holidays, said Eileen Graham, PhD, who co-authored that study. And those feelings are most pronounced for the oldest. “What was striking was how consistent the uptick in loneliness is in older adulthood,” Graham noted when the study was published. “There’s a wealth of evidence that loneliness is related to poorer health, so we wanted to better understand who is lonely and why people are becoming lonelier as they age out of midlife so we can hopefully start finding ways to mitigate it.” One way to ease loneliness for these folks is to invite them into your home. “Young adults who are living in unfamiliar cities and setting up new social networks will often find ways to celebrate with Friendsgivings because they might not be coming home for the holidays,” said Graham, an associate professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Others include older adults who have lost friends or spouses and, finally, people who have fewer resources.” Ideas for connecting during the holidays include finding community, exercise, practicing self-care and seeking counseling.
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Chicago Tribune
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As Americans are beyond burned out, Tricia Hersey’s Nap Ministry preaches the right to rest
The South Side native, Tricia Hersey tackles many of society’s ills — racism, patriarchy, aggressive capitalism and ableism — through an undervalued yet impactful action: rest. Hersey, who has degrees in public health and divinity, originated the “rest as resistance” and “rest as reparations” frameworks after experimenting with rest as an exhausted graduate student in seminary. Once she started napping, she felt happier and her grades improved. But she also felt more connected to her ancestors; her work was informed by the cultural trauma of slavery that she was studying as an archivist. Hersey described the transformation as “life-changing.” Jennifer Mundt, PhD, a Northwestern clinician and professor of sleep medicine, psychiatry and behavioral sciences, praises Hersey for bringing the issue of sleep and rest to the public. Mundt argues that our culture focuses too heavily on sleep as something that must be earned rather than a vital aspect of health and that linking sleep to productivity is harmful and stigmatizing. “Linking sleep and productivity is harmful because it overshadows the bevy of other reasons to prioritize sleep as an essential component of health,” Mundt wrote. “It also stigmatizes groups that are affected by sleep disparities and certain chronic sleep disorders.”
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Yahoo! News
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A radical new idea to speed up anti-aging research: Test ovaries, not mice
A study published in Nature Aging on Friday reveals a new and revolutionary way to rapidly test out potential antiaging drugs: Give them to women. Or, more specifically, test them out on aging ovaries, whether in well-controlled human studies, in the ovaries of mice, or in donor tissue samples. The finding could speed up the way that so-called geroprotective (aka longevity) drugs are evaluated, and ultimately brought to market, by making it easier for researchers to assess how well potential aging drugs are working. Researchers could measure the health of ovaries dosed with different drugs and supplements over a matter of months, instead of waiting years or decades to see what works. The study is the first of its kind. “This is the first time where you’ve seen a really solid study done by a leading aging researcher that is demonstrating that a very highly conserved pathway that drives aging is happening in the ovary,” Francesca Duncan, PhD, a professor of reproductive science at Northwestern University, explained.”We just don’t consider women in their 30s to 50s in that ‘old’ category,” she said. “But I think that tide has turned because we know this is an aging process and it has significant clinical and societal implications. So more and more people are paying attention to this concept of ovarian aging and considering it as a true aging process.”
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CBS News Chicago
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A mom’s journey is a sign of hope for starting a family after cancer treatment
The day before a couple was going to start in vitro fertilization, or IVF, the mother-to-be, Ionna Lo Destro got a shocking diagnosis. She had leukemia. Ioanna did not even have time to preserve her eggs. Kara Goldman, MD, fertility preservation director at Northwestern Medicine, helps patients like Ioanna. Dr. Kara Goldman, fertility preservation director at Northwestern Medicine, helps patients like Ioanna. Goldman said doing IVF during cancer treatment can be risky. “They might have very low platelets—making it likely that they would bleed during a procedure,” she said. “They may have very low white blood cell counts—putting them at a high risk of infection.” However, three years later, Ionna’s cancer was in remission so she continued the long-delayed IVF and a year later had a daughter. Goldman said there is a message of hope that goes beyond just one family too. “I think the lesson is that, you know, where there is hope of parenthood, there is often a way,” said Dr. Goldman. Dr. Goldman said time is also a big cost of cancer treatment for couples waiting to have a baby, like the Lo Destros. But they can still have the family they dream about.
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New York Times
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8 Factors That Put You at Risk of Severe Flu
A new analysis by the C.D.C., which examined flu-related hospitalizations from 2010 to 2023, unpacks some of the factors that put people most at risk of severe health outcomes. Age, neurological disorders, lung diseases, pregnancy, obesity and chronic metabolic diseases, heart disease, high blood pressure and vaccination status are among the main contributors. About half of adults hospitalized with the flu have heart disease, according to the C.D.C. People with cardiovascular disease tend to be older adults with less robust immune systems, said Sadiya Khan, MD, MSc, a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine. Studies have shown that flu increases the risk of heart attack and stroke in people with cardiovascular disease, she said. “People who have heart disease are less able to tolerate the stress of the infection itself,” she said.Even if you are vaccinated, it’s important to watch out for symptoms that might warrant medical care, like difficulty breathing and chest pain. Experts also recommend seeking care if you have other flu symptoms, such as a fever or cough, that don’t go away on their own within a week.
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New York Times
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Disillusioned by the Election, Some Black Women Are Deciding to Rest
Black women voters supported Kamala Harris in overwhelming numbers — upward of 90 percent cast ballots for her, according to some exit polls. However, Trump’s win, despite a long history of allegations of racism and sexism, was a ‘harsh reminder’ of the role racism could play in American politics. Many Black women are opting for a “rest era.” So what does a “rest era” look like? In interviews and online, some Black women said it could mean striving for more sleep, declining extra responsibilities at work or exploring new hobbies. Others said it might mean volunteering in local Black communities, eating more healthfully, spending time with loved ones or simply allowing themselves to grieve the election’s outcome or distance themselves from national politics. These public declarations of stepping back are a shift from the leadership role Black women have historically played in politics, said Inger Burnett-Zeigler, PhD, an associate professor of psychiatry at Northwestern University and author of the book “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen: The Emotional Lives of Black Women.” Black women have been at the vanguard of political and social movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, as well as mobilizations to elect Hillary Clinton in 2016 and President Biden in 2020. “It’s an important step in two things: in boundary setting and in recognizing what’s in your control,” Dr. Burnett-Zeigler said.
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WBEZ Chicago
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COVID-19’s silver lining? Researchers find the virus has ability to fight cancer
The COVID-19 virus may have the surprising ability to shrink some tumors, paving the way for new cancer treatments, a new study has found. The research, conducted at the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute and set to be the cover story for the November issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, began after a recent discovery. In some cases, cancer patients with a severe COVID-19 infection saw a temporary regression of their cancer, said Ankit Bharat, MBBS, chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Canning Thoracic Institute. “That was what really sparked our interest,” Bharat said. Bharat and his team, investigating why that regression happened, learned that the RNA within the COVID-19 virus triggers the development of a unique immune cell that can fight cancer. The findings will help develop a treatment that mimics how the virus makes those immune cells. The results show promise for treating some of the most common cancers, including melanoma, lung, breast and colon cancer, Bharat said. The study was done using both human tissues and animal models. Researchers found that the COVID-19 virus is able to transform the common monocyte, a white blood cell in the immune system, into a powerful immune cell. Those cells are then able to travel and attack cancer cells inside tumors. “It’s incredible, and a big surprise, that the same infection that caused so much devastation can help create a cancer-fighting cell,” Bharat said.
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Fox 32 Chicago
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Northwestern study links COVID-19 RNA to cancer-fighting cells
New research from Northwestern University shows a surprise connection between COVID-19 and cancer regression. Researchers found the RNA from the virus triggers a unique type of immune cell with anti-cancer fighting abilities. They say this new information opens the door for new research and a way to treat cancer. Doctors say this research was inspired by a trend they noticed during the pandemic. “Some patients who had stage four cancer, when they develop severe COVID, we found that some of their cancer sites or the cancer in several sites shrunk,” said Ankit Bharat, MBBS. So, researchers at Northwestern started their journey to figure out why this might be happening. They discovered when someone gets badly infected with COVID, the virus can actually enter the bloodstream, shedding its RNA. That gets circulated and becomes a very common immune cell called monocytes. “They convert these monocytes into friendly cells. Basically, they convert them into cells that protect those cancer cells against second invasion by the immune system of the host. So what we found was that the RNA of the COVID virus could convert these monocytes into not those cancer-friendly cells, but cancer-fighting cells,” said Bharat.
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TIME
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COVID-19’s Surprising Effect on Cancer
Viruses don’t often come with silver linings, and infections don’t generally lead to positive health effects. But during the pandemic, some doctors anecdotally began noticing that some people with cancer who got very sick with COVID-19 saw their tumors shrink or grow more slowly. “We didn’t know if it was real, because these patients were so sick,” says Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery at Northwestern University. “Was it because the immune system was so triggered by COVID-19 that it also started to kill cancer cells? What was it?” Bharat and his team decided conduct a study to find out if the seeming “benefit” of COVID-19 for these cancer patients could teach them anything about a potential new way to fight cancer—or if it was simply a red herring. They published their findings Nov. 15 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Another intriguing part of the equation, says Bharat, is that this pathway is independent of the T cell immune treatments that are becoming a big part of cancer therapy now, in which doctors boost the population of T cells that can recognize and attack cancer cells. They can be effective, but generally only work for a while, since cancers quickly find ways to circumvent the T cells and become resistant to the therapies.
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Reuters
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Health Rounds: Obesity-related heart disease deaths spike in US
Obesity-related deaths among U.S. adults with clogged heart arteries increased by 180% between 1999 and 2020, according to data released in advance of the American Heart Association scientific meeting in Chicago. In men, ischemic heart disease deaths associated with obesity rose from 2.1 per 100,000 people in 1999 to 7.2 per 100,000 in 2020, an increase of 243%, researchers found. In women, the rate increased by 131%, from 1.6 deaths per 100,000 people in 1999 to 3.7 per 100,000 in 2020. The increases were particularly marked among middle-aged men, Black adults, residents of Midwestern states and non-metropolitan areas, researchers found. Overall, the analysis of 21 years of data from a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention database identified 226,267 obesity-related ischemic heart disease deaths during that period. “The relative change in ischemic heart disease deaths related to obesity that was observed in this study between 1999 and 2020 was greater than the overall increase in obesity prevalence that we’ve seen in the United States, from about 30% to about 40% over this same time frame,” AHA spokesperson Sadiya Khan, MD, MSc of Northwestern School of Medicine in Chicago, said in a statement. Kahn, who was not involved in the study, suggested that greater awareness of obesity as a risk factor and more treatment for the condition may have made it more likely to be included on death certificates, which were the basis of the new data.
