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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Fox 32 Chicago
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What is neurodivergence? Gus Walz brings condition into spotlight after viral Chicago DNC moment
Guz Walz, son of Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, drew attention to neurodivergence after showing support for his father at the DNC. His parents recently shared that Gus has a nonverbal learning disorder, which is one form of neurodivergence. “When some people hear the term, I think they often think about how individuals may be impacted by neurodivergence to a greater degree. There’s a lot of people who almost have invisible disabilities, that have neurodivergence that you may not know when you meet them, day to day, but have other kinds of struggles they are working on with therapists or support they might need in school,” said Rachel Follmer, MD, attending physician in Developmental Pediatrics at Lurie Children’s Hospital and assistant professor of pediatrics (developmental behavioral pediatrics) at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Autism and ADHD are among some of the bigger reasons why someone is considered neurodivergent. A nonverbal learning disorder, or NVLD, is another one, and don’t let the name fool you. “The tricky part about that is when people hear nonverbal, they often think someone isn’t talking and the opposite is actually true with that,” Follmer said. “This is something that early on is often difficult to see in younger children. It tends to become more apparent as kids get older because these patterns become more important and more nuanced in your ability to take that early learning skills and apply them as you get into the middle school age range,” Follmer said. If you think your child may be neurodivergent, the panel says the first step is to talk with your pediatrician to get qualified referrals to mental health professionals.
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USA Today
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James Van Der Beek, Jenna Fischer and the rise of young people getting cancer
There’s no exact cause known for the rise in cancers among young people, according to experts, but researchers are trying to figure it out. The best bet for a health-conscious person is fine-tuning diet and exercise routines, staying up-to-date on screenings, listening to your body and going to regular doctor’s appointments. A leading theory behind this incidence uptick is all the changes to our microbiome over time – the environment, air, water, etc. “A lot of folks suspect that there’s early life exposures that may have something to do with either our water supply or our food supply,” says Mohamed Abazeed, , co-leader of the Lung Cancer Program in the Lurie Cancer Center at Northwestern University. Abazeed adds: “When you change somebody’s diet dramatically, or you change the population’s diet dramatically in such a short period of time, we haven’t yet adapted to that, and the way our body reacts to that is by mounting an inflammatory response.” The short of it: If you experience dietary or weight changes or a shift in bowel habits that lasts for weeks? Go to the doctor.
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WBEZ Chicago
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Access to IVF in Illinois is unequal. A ballot referendum could help change that.
Voters across Illinois are being asked this election season to weigh in with their ballots on reproductive rights. The question: “Should all medically appropriate assisted reproductive treatments, including, but not limited to, in vitro fertilization, be covered by any health insurance plan in Illinois that provides coverage for pregnancy benefits, without limitation on the number of treatments?” The lack of IVF coverage in Medicaid plans is common across the U.S., but it creates a big barrier to access for people who can least afford to pay, said Katie Watson, JD, a professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine who specializes in reproductive rights. “It is a violation of reproductive justice, the right to have a child, to allow medical treatments to be divvied up based on income,” Watson said. Lindsay Allen, PhD, a health economist at Northwestern, said she’s not surprised by WBEZ’s findings. A majority of people who have Medicaid in Illinois are either Black or Latino, groups reporting some of the lowest rates of fertility treatments, WBEZ found. Accessing fertility treatments like IVF isn’t just about having health insurance cover the cost, Allen said. It’s also about how easily patients can get to a provider depending on where they live, or if they have a flexible job that allows them to leave work to race to a doctor’s visit. “IVF is such a complicated process, and it requires an awful lot of self-advocacy on the part of the patient,” Allen said.
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CNN
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Life with narcolepsy: ‘It’s not a joke, it’s a very serious illness’
Matthew Horsnell began falling asleep for no reason when he was in sixth grade. By age 20, Horsnell began losing control of his body for brief periods when he felt a strong emotion, falling or slumping to the ground conscious but paralyzed — a condition called cataplexy. Horsnell has narcolepsy, a sleep disorder that makes it hard to stay awake for long periods. Not only will a person fall asleep repeatedly during the day, but they will have extremely disrupted sleep at night, said Jennifer Mundt, PhD, assistant professor of sleep medicine, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Narcolepsy is estimated to affect one in 2,000 people in the United States and some 3 million worldwide, according to the Narcolepsy Network, a non-profit patient advocacy group. However, that estimate is likely low due to difficulties with obtaining a proper diagnosis, said Mundt, who treats patients with narcolepsy and conducts research on the condition. In fact, it’s estimated that only 25% of people who have narcolepsy are diagnosed and receive treatment, according to the Narcolepsy Network. “On average, it takes 10 or more years to get diagnosed, so we know there’s a lot of people out there who may have it and are going untreated,” Mundt said. “Many people are never seen by a sleep specialist, who is one of the few physicians trained to recognize the symptoms.”
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Chicago Magazine
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The New Science of Aging Backward
John Wilkins, MD, clinical director at the institute’s Human Longevity Laboratory, puts it like this: “When you ask how old someone is, you may be asking how long they’ve been alive, but you’re also implicitly asking how much time they probably have left.” Chronological age can’t tell you that, but biological age can. Douglas Vaughan, MD has been the director of the Potocsnak Longevity Institute since it was founded in 2022. “For just about every disease you can think of, age is the most important risk factor,” he says. “The point I’m making is that sometimes people focus so much on the body, but they forget that our brain is attached to everything in our body. Things like stress, loneliness, isolation, and adversity all have an effect.” Exactly how these factors affect us, and in what ways we can alter their impact, is what Wilkins and his colleagues at the Human Longevity Lab hope to discover.
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New York Times
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C.D.C. Warns of Unusual Rise in Walking Pneumonia Cases
Infections with the bacteria that causes walking pneumonia have risen significantly this year, particularly among young children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned this month. The bacteria, called Mycoplasma pneumoniae, spreads through coughs and sneezes and can cause respiratory illnesses. Cases have risen among adults and children, but the most notable increase has been among children between 2 and 4, which experts say is striking given that the bacteria typically infects older children. Data suggests that doctors have diagnosed a growing number of children in this age group with infections after they sought treatment in emergency rooms for pneumonia. The rise among younger children may be in part because many stayed home during pandemic lockdowns, instead of going to day care or school. Tests to detect infections with the bacteria have also become better and more widely used in recent years, said Benjamin Singer, MD, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute. It’s possible that part of the increase is because of increased testing.
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ABC News
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What to know about Lassa fever after Iowa resident dies of the rare disease
An Iowa resident has died after contracting a suspected case of Lassa fever, health officials said. Lassa fever is often spread by coming into contact with the urine or droppings of contaminated rats. Multimammate rats often live in areas where food supplies are stored. Such contact can occur by touching contaminated objects, eating contaminated food, getting the virus in an open cut or sore, eating infected rodents, or breathing air that’s contaminated with infected urine or droppings, such as when cleaning or sweeping, the CDC said. “It’s not airborne. It’s not like COVID,” Robert Murphy, MD, a professor of infectious diseases at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, told ABC News. “[Lassa fever], it has to be a fluid. … So, you don’t have to worry about being in the same room with somebody, but you have to be worried if you have been touching that person or dealing with that person and being exposed to any fluids that they have.” Lassa fever symptoms typically appear one to three weeks after a person is initially infected, according to the CDC. Less than 1% of people who contract Lassa fever die. However, of those who become seriously ill and are hospitalized, the mortality rate is about 15%. “Once they get really sick, the death is pretty quick. It’s within seven to 14 days, usually,” Murphy said.
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Yahoo! News
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Do you really need to exfoliate your face?
In beauty publications and on social media, exfoliation is often presented as an essential step in a skincare routine. While experts agree there are benefits to proper exfoliation, they also say it’s possible to take it too far. So how often do you really need to be exfoliating? And, what happens if you don’t do it? There are two types of exfoliants: physical (or mechanical) and chemical. Chemical exfoliants often contain alpha hydroxy acids like glycolic acid or lactic acid, or beta hydroxy acids like salicylic acid, says Murad Alam, MD, vice-chair of the department of dermatology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “Retinols in cosmetic products or topical medications can also be used as exfoliants,” he adds. Overdoing exfoliation, both chemical and physical, can irritate the skin by causing it to tear and by damaging the cells in the skin, says Alam. He adds that over-exfoliating can also “remove the natural oils and chemicals that keep the skin healthy”.
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WBEZ Chicago
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Can prison cause dementia? New Northwestern study explores how incarceration impacts health
Philip Merritt, who was 70 at the time, began struggling to put together sentences and understand what others were saying. Then he could only grunt in response and, eventually, he stopped talking altogether. A research effort at Northwestern University hopes to learn more about how incarceration can be a risk factor for dementia, like Philip Merritt’s. Several studies have explored the connection between poor health and incarceration, but this study is investigating how all the conditions of prison can worsen someone’s health, said Linda Teplin, PhD, the study’s principal investigator. “This is the first study ever to look at how the dose of incarceration has affected health and aging,” Teplin said. “When you study anything in epidemiology as a risk factor for disease, you look not just at, ‘Yes or no, does the person have that risk factor?’ But you look at the dose of that risk factor,” Teplin said. To predict the chance of cognitive decline, people need to be studied before they develop dementia to help identify risk factors, Teplin said. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia. Teplin is building on work she started in the 1990s with the Northwestern Juvenile Project. That effort, which Teplin still leads, was created to track the health and outcomes of incarcerated youth. With this new grant, researchers will continue studying that original group of 1,829 people, now in their 40s. “This is a new question for us,” Teplin said. “We’ve studied only the health needs and outcomes. We have never studied how incarceration affects health.” Teplin also hopes their work will help limit the harm incarceration does and make detention facilities more about rehabilitation than punishment.
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New York Times
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What Drugmakers Did Not Tell Volunteers in Alzheimer’s Trials
Early last year, the Food and Drug Administration approved Eisai’s Alzheimer’s drug, marketed as Leqembi, saying its modest benefit — a slight slowing of cognitive decline for a handful of months — outweighed its risks. This past July, the agency approved a second, similar drug, Kisunla. In a clinical trial, its maker, Eli Lilly, also chose not to tell 289 volunteers that their genetic profiles made them vulnerable to brain injuries, The Times found. Dozens experienced what Lilly classified as “severe” brain bleeding. “The people who are in charge of the clinical trial have not come to grips with the severity of the toxicity” of Leqembi, said Rudolph J. Castellani, MD, a pathology professor at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Castellani performed an autopsy on Jean Terrien, the other high-risk volunteer who died during the Leqembi trial. Scanned images showed widespread bleeding that Dr. Castellani, the Northwestern physician who performed Ms. Terrien’s autopsy, described as “quite unlike anything I really encountered across the spectrum of human illnesses.”
