Media Coverage

Over one in five Americans between the ages of 40 and 75 already take a statin to prevent an initial heart attack or stroke, the American study from 2017 estimated. Following either of the guidelines consistently would add millions to that list, and the ACC/AHA recommendation in particular would more than double it. Pencina said that much of the difference — 9.3 million people — includes those under 60 and those with diabetes. Some of these people may have a low 10-year risk, he said, but a relatively high 30-year risk.The guidelines “highlight many, many important similarities much more than it highlights some small differences,” said Dr. Don Lloyd-Jones, a spokesperson for the AHA and a professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Several studies, in fact, have examined the period between the end of Christmas and the first week or so of the New Year, and determined that this period is linked to an increase in deaths. Experts attribute this to fatal heart issues. “There is some substance to this notion that there is an increase in cardiac deaths associated with the holiday season,” said Dr. Clyde Yancy, a former president of the American Heart Association and chief of cardiology in the Department of Medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “People are overextending themselves.”

As recent work by the Northwestern University psychologist Greg Miller has shown, willing oneself to be “gritty” can be quite stressful. Studying about 300 teenagers from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds, Professor Miller found that those who were better at using self-control did have more success when it came to resisting temptations, but at a cost to their health. Their bodies suffered not only from increased stress responses, but also from premature aging of their immune cells.

However, there was no longer a meaningful difference in diabetes risk between black and white people once researchers accounted for a variety of factors that can contribute to this disease including obesity, neighborhood segregation and poverty levels, depression, education and employment. “Our work suggests that if we can eliminate these differences in traditional risk factors between blacks and whites then we can reduce the race disparities in the development of diabetes,” said lead study author Michael Bancks, a researcher at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

“The deterioration of function, disability and suffering have their own grieving processes, but helping families deal with that isn’t built into the health care system,” said Dr. John Rolland, professor of psychiatry at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and author of “Families, Illness and Disability: An Integrative Treatment Model.” Rolland and several other experts offered advice on how to deal with difficult emotions that can arise with frailty or serious illness.

“We know that patients want to be treated close to home if possible, but children are not just little adults,” said Dr. Fizan Abdullah, a researcher at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “They have special needs that can often best be treated by a pediatric specialist,” Abdullah said by email. “The objective is to treat the child in the best way possible, with the most expertise, and get them home as soon as possible,” Abdullah said. “Physicians at the referring hospital, or children’s hospital, can then also continue to work with their local provider as needed.”

But David, who at the time was at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago, and his colleague James Collins at Northwestern University Medical School found that even educated, middle-class African-American women were at a higher risk of having smaller, premature babies with a lower chance of survival. For example, David says, black and white teenage mothers growing up in poor neighborhoods both have a higher risk of having smaller, premature babies. “They both have something like a 13 percent chance of having a low birth weight baby,” he says.

While modest, past studies investigating higher doses of temozolomide and the use of antibody drugs that target the blood supply and growth of the tumor have not been able to deliver such gains. “This is a completely new therapy, the use of physical force on cancer cells,” said lead study author Dr. Roger Stupp, professor of neurosurgery and medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

For patients with strep throat, penicillin works and antibiotics are an effective and appropriate treatment, noted Dr. Jeffrey Linder, a researcher at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “Most sore throats are not strep and should be treated symptomatically,” Linder, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. This means getting plenty of rest, drinking plenty of fluids, and taking over the counter medications for inflammation and pain, Linder advised. “You should only take antibiotics if you have a positive test for strep throat,” Linder added.

Dr. Patrick Lank, an emergency room doctor at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, says he believes the benefits outweigh the risk. “It is a life-saving medicine, and without it people absolutely die,” he said. Lank said it’s critically important that people who are given Naloxone immediately go to the ER.Numbers provided by the state show Naloxone use by emergency responders has increased 250 percent. The opioid epidemic is being called the deadliest drug crisis in American history. Nearly 2,000 people in Illinois died of an opioid overdose in 2016.