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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New York Times
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How Healthy Are Eggs?
To many nutrition experts, eggs are golden — one of the most accessible and affordable protein sources available. The scientific community used to be more divided about dietary cholesterol risks, said Philip Greenland, MD, a professor of cardiology and preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. But the Dietary Guidelines for Americans stopped including daily dietary cholesterol limits in 2015, and, in 2019, the American Heart Association published an advisory saying dietary cholesterol (the kind found in eggs) is not a major concern for heart disease. That doesn’t mean people should eat eggs in excess, Dr. Greenland said. Studies that have shown eggs don’t increase blood cholesterol mostly focused on moderate egg consumption — think one egg per day or two every other day, he said. One egg contains more than six grams of protein, which nutrition experts consider high, relative to its 70 total calories. No matter how you prepare them, eggs provide high-quality protein and nutrients, experts said.
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Yahoo! News
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5 years after the pandemic started, COVID-19 is still around. Masks? Not so much.
Even at the peak of the pandemic, how much people masked depended a lot on where they lived, and that’s likely still the case today. Rachel Amdur, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at Northwestern University, tells Yahoo Life that while the U.S. is likely not at the same level of comfort with wearing masks in public as countries in Asia, it’s more common now to see people wearing masks in public here than it was before COVID arrived on the scene. Still, Amdur says we “have a long way to go” with understanding how masks work to prevent respiratory illness. In the meantime, she says it’s probably a good idea to wear a mask in public if you have symptoms of an upper respiratory virus — such as nasal congestion, sore throat or fever — or if you’re immunocompromised and in a crowded public space.
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Chicago Tribune
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Five years ago, COVID gripped the world in fear. Now local scientists, doctors warn Trump’s policies are weakening public health.
Five years ago, reports of the new and mysterious virus emanating from China gripped the globe in terror and uncertainty. As infections spread across continents, humanity raced to better understand the novel coronavirus and prevent its proliferation, with case counts, hospitalizations and deaths climbing rapidly. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, the first in over a century. The international agency urged everyone around the globe to work together to alter the course of the virus, which had already touched 114 nations and ended more than 4,000 lives. Many medical professionals will never forget how the virus ravaged their patients and threatened to collapse the health care system not so long ago. They urge the nation to remain vigilant against emerging threats — and to not dismantle the public health strides of the past five years. Marc Sala, MD was working in the intensive care unit at Northwestern Memorial Hospital when the pandemic began. Terrified, he and his wife, who is also a doctor, printed off copies of their living wills “in preparation for the fact that we were going to do our jobs at any cost and we wanted to make sure our family was taken care of.” “We just went through hell,” said Sala, who is now co-director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive COVID-19 Center. “Let’s not forget all the lessons we took from this. This needs to be a learning experience for the next pandemic. If you’re thinking this is a once-in-a-100-years thing, you’re not paying attention.”
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WBEZ Chicago
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Spring forward? Here’s how to ease the time change.
Clocks will “spring forward” as daylight saving time takes effect at 2 a.m. Sunday, meaning we jump ahead one hour. While the extra evening sunlight might be welcome, the lost hour of sleep can leave people feeling groggy and out of sync. Clara Peek said the key to a smoother transition is simple: Plan ahead. “When we adjust to a shift in our circadian phase — like the one hour change when we spring forward — two main factors come into play,” said Peek, an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at Northwestern University with 15 years of experience researching circadian clock disruptions. “First, there’s sleep deprivation. Losing an hour of sleep can lead to fatigue, changes in blood pressure and cognitive impacts. Second, there’s the shift in our circadian rhythm itself. What makes spring forward particularly disruptive is that we wake up earlier, which means losing exposure to morning light.” That means Sunday morning will feel darker than usual, as the sun will rise an hour later. To ease the shift, Peek recommends getting outside as soon as possible. “Morning light is a critical signal for our internal clocks. Even if it’s cloudy, being outside provides much more natural light than staying indoors,” she said.
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USA Today
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RFK Jr. touts vitamin A for measles prevention. Doctors disagree.
Late last month, the U.S. had its first death from measles in a decade when a school-aged child died in Texas, the epicenter of a current outbreak. Measles is a vaccine-preventable disease that was formerly eradicated in the U.S. in 2000. The vaccine is usually given early in childhood as the standard set of immunizations required to attend school. Newly-appointed Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a history of pushing anti-vaccine sentiments, has since urged parents to consider vaccination. He has also, however, touted other measures of prevention and treatment that doctors and health experts say are not medically or scientifically sound. “Vitamin A will reduce measles mortality, and this is especially in low-to middle-income, resource-limited countries where vitamin A deficiency and malnutrition is very common,” Tina Tan, MD, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and a professor at Northwestern University Feinberg University School of Medicine, said during a briefing on Tuesday. However, “in persons that are not malnourished, studies have actually shown that vitamin A really has no effect,” she added. Further, you can have too much Vitamin A. Vitamin A toxicity can cause symptoms including, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, joint pain, bone pain, fatigue, skin changes, liver damage, blurred vision and increased intracranial pressure, warned Tan. In children, it can cause developmental problems and other types of neurologic defects.
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Yahoo! News
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Expert: Prevent eczema flare-ups by teaching immune system to tolerate allergenic foods
Contrary to commonly held beliefs, current research shows that cutting out certain foods makes little difference in controlling the skin disease eczema, a renowned U.S. dermatologist said Friday. The latest probes into the complex links between diet, food allergies and eczema — also known as atopic dermatitis — reveal eczema may be better controlled or even prevented by building up tolerances to allergenic foods at an early age, according to Peter Lio, , a dermatology and pediatrics professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Eczema is a chronic disease that usually begins in childhood in which the skin becomes extremely itchy. Scratching it can lead to further redness, swelling, cracking, “weeping” clear fluid, crusting and scaling, according to the National Institutes of Health. Among Lio’s key points at the Orlando conference is that recent studies generally refute long-held “common sense” beliefs held by many eczema sufferers that their conditions must somehow be related to what they eat. “Many patients and families start the visit by explaining that they are convinced that food must be the ‘root cause’ of their eczema. It would be fantastic — and easy — if it were just food causing the eczema. But, in my experience, and more importantly, when carefully reviewing the literature, we find that this very rarely the case,” he told UPI in emailed comments. And yet, food allergies do indeed appear be associated with eczema — but maybe just not in the way commonly believed.
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CBS News
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Researchers seek to demystify the biology of aging
Medical researchers in Chicago are studying the difference between a person’s chronological age — how many years they’ve lived — and their biological age, how old their body actually is. “We are in a place where the biology of aging has been demystified,” said Douglas Vaughan, MD, director of the Potocsnak Longevity Institute at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and the head of the study. “…If we can slow down aging, just a little bit, we can push back the onset of disease, and we can give people a longer health span.” The researchers use a series of tests to calculate biological age, including a scan of the retina and an analysis of participants’ physical movement. “Artificial intelligence gives us the opportunity to find patterns in the data that we can’t find with our eyes, that we can’t detect with a human brain,” said Josh Cheema, , a cardiologist with Northwestern Medicine involved in the project. The work has a special focus on people in marginalized communities and those living with long-term medical problems. “We are really interested in finding out ways to slow down aging in people that are disadvantaged,” Vaughan said.
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ABC News
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Vitamin A, While Helpful for Measles, Is Not a Replacement for Vaccination
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommend vitamin A for all patients with measles — not just severe cases — but experts warn that this shouldn’t be seen as a replacement for vaccination. In a recent opinion piece for Fox News, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote that studies support the administration of vitamin A “under the supervision of a physician for those with mild, moderate, and severe infection” and that it can reduce mortality from the disease. Tina Tan, MD, of Northwestern University, who is president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said vitamin A “really plays an important role in maintaining a healthy immune system and supports the function of immune cells so the body can fight off infections like measles.” However, taking vitamin A won’t prevent a child from getting measles in the first place. Tan emphasized that vaccination is the only way to stop more measles outbreaks like the current one in west Texas, where 159 cases have been identified since late January, with 22 hospitalizations and one death — the first measles death in the U.S. since 2015. Tan said that the “number of unvaccinated individuals is growing, and that basically increases the risk for spread of measles, because measles is one of the most contagious viruses.”
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US News & World Report
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Unvaccinated New Mexico Adult Tests Positive for Measles After Death
A New Mexico resident who has died, tested positive for measles, the state health department said on Thursday, marking the second measles-related death in the United States in more than a decade. he unvaccinated adult patient did not seek medical care before death, and was the first measles-related death in the state in more than 40 years. Measles typically kills 1 to 3 people per 1,000 cases, said Tina Tan, MD, an infectious disease expert at Northwestern University in Chicago. She said two deaths out of a total of 164 cases suggest “a much higher mortality rate than we would normally see,” adding that there are probably many undetected cases. New Mexico’s health department said it will host two community vaccination clinics on March 11.
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WGN Chicago
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Local doctor and veteran help Ukraine war amputees
For veterans, phantom limb pain after amputation can be a lifelong burden. Doctors knew it was a nerve and tissue problem, but other than prescribing pain medication, they could do little to help. Now there is a new approach that has been studied in Ukrainians due to the massive limb loss in recent years. And the answer could help all those who suffer, from amputees to spinal cord injury patients. For Northwestern Medicine anesthesiologist Steven Cohen, MD, the research is personal. “I’m a retired army colonel,” he said. “I treated many, many patients with war trauma.” The anesthesiologist was contacted by doctors in the war-torn country searching for solutions for amputees suffering with intense pain. “When a nerve is cut or when a nerve is injured, it forms a tangled web and that can send spontaneous pain signals into the stump into the phantom, the nerve can become entrapped,” he said. To help patients, Cohen brought his expertise and potential new treatments, including what’s called hydro dissection. “Hydro dissection resulted in decreased pain when we looked at 12-week outcomes. It resulted in decreased anxiety and depression and decreased opioid use,” Cohen said. The simple treatment may help other types of patients, not just amputees.
