Media Coverage

“It has been extremely challenging, and many clinical trials have failed,” said Dr. Dimitri Krainc chairman of the department of neurology and director of the Center for Rare Neurological Diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “However, we have learned important lessons from these failures.” The bigger problem, though, is that levodopa and other approved agents aren’t neuroprotective, said Krainc, “meaning that they do not prevent neurons from degenerating.” Recent advancements in genetics provide some hope for better drug targets — including, according to Krainc, for the kind of Parkinson’s that Silverstein has, driven by a mutation in GBA. Krainc is a co-founder of Lysosomal Therapeutics and chairs its scientific advisory board.

Northwestern Medicine scientists have found for the first time, that breathing rhythm induces electrical activity that enhances both memory recall and emotional judgements. “One of the major findings in this study is that there is a dramatic difference in brain activity in the amygdala and hippocampus during inhalation compared with exhalation,” said lead author Christina Zelano , assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “When you breathe in, we discovered you are stimulating neurons in the olfactory cortex, amygdala and hippocampus, all across the limbic system.”

Dr. Califf’s editorial accompanied a rather startling report in the journal by Dr. Shuai Xu, a dermatologist, and two colleagues at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. On the heels of the thousands of complaints uncovered about WEN products, the F.D.A. made publicly available its Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition’s Adverse Event Reporting System, a repository of adverse events related to foods, dietary supplements and cosmetics. This enabled Dr. Xu and colleagues to analyze all the adverse events associated with cosmetics and personal care products voluntarily submitted from 2004 through 2016 by consumers and health care professionals. Through 2014, they averaged 396 a year. There was a 78 percent increase in reports in 2015 and a 300 percent rise in 2016, largely driven by complaints about WEN products.

“It seems every two or three years we have another controversy in women’s health,” says Steve Xu, a health-­policy researcher and Northwestern University dermatology resident who co-wrote a paper that found “significant weaknesses” in FDA approval of high-risk gynecological devices. “We have pelvic mesh, we have concerns with morcellators” — devices used during hysterectomies that can spread undiagnosed cancer. “And then with Essure, it’s like, here we go again.”

“Ultimately, being in your own home is where most seniors want to be. With home-based primary care, it allows physicians to meet that need,” said Dr. Lee Lindquist , chief of geriatrics at Feinberg, who leads the initiative. “With HCCI we’re able to leverage the educational abilities of Northwestern and lead the field in training the new generation of physicians in home-based medical care.”

Dr. Ruchi Gupta a food allergy researcher at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who led the national study, noted that at allergy meetings around the world, “you’d hear more and more about adult-onset food allergy. But this was all anecdotal. That’s the reason we did the study, to get the numbers behind how frequently.” Last year, Dr. Gupta and colleagues from Northwestern and the NORC Survey Research Lab at the University of Chicago surveyed 40,447 adults across the United States, recruited from a nationally representative sample. They found that shellfish was the most common food allergy among adults, affecting 3.9 percent of the population, followed by peanut allergies, at 2.4 percent, and tree nut allergies, at 1.9 percent.

“It’s the whole psychological thing of how regular are you and are you in a frame of mind to have that regular bowel movement,” said Dr. Michael Ruchim
, associate chief medical officer at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. It’s something that’s talked about but “not well-described in literature with science behind it.”

President Trump and distinguished members of Congress: My colleagues, patients and I are ready, willing and able to help you craft a new health care bill. Please reach across the aisles and include us. Together we can find a better way.
Written by Dr. Melissa Simon

Muscle aches and pains are the most common side effect associated with statins, with about 20 percent of patients reporting these symptoms, said said Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones. He’s a professor of preventive medicine and cardiology at the Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago. “They have the muscle aches anyway,” Lloyd-Jones said. “If you think about it, in general people who are getting statins are a little bit older, and we’re advising to stay physically active for their heart health. They’re going to have some muscle aches.” Lloyd-Jones said statins can increase blood sugar levels, creating a 10 percent to 20 percent increased risk of developing diabetes. “However, and this is a big however, people with normal blood sugar and people who are not significantly obese do not develop diabetes from being put on a statin,” Lloyd-Jones said. “It’s only people who are already at high risk for developing diabetes who get a little bump in their blood sugar from a statin that pushes them over the threshold of diagnosis.”

“It’s a fascinating report — one of those things that comes out of the blue,” said Dr. June Robinson , a Northwestern University research professor in dermatology. Robinson is also editor of the medical journal JAMA Dermatology, which published the study online this month. She said the results deserve a deeper look but cautioned that it’s way too soon to suggest that they might lead to new treatments for gray hair.