Media Coverage

About half of the time, parents use pet words for the anatomy when they take their children to his office, said Dr. Scott Goldstein, a pediatrician with Northwestern Children’s Practice and instructor at the Feinberg School of Medicine. But Goldstein said he’d prefer that parents use the proper terminology. “It is important to teach children the name of their body parts, so that they are comfortable understanding and communicating about their bodies,” Goldstein said. “Just like it would be odd to teach a child to call their eye a ‘see see’ or their hand a ‘touchy touchy,’ it can be infantilizing and discomforting to encourage them to use euphemisms or unique words to discuss their genitals.”

“It appears that some elderly individuals are immune to the effects of Alzheimer’s pathology,” said neurologist Changiz Geula, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who presented the findings Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego.

Still, under no circumstance should parents feed their babies whole peanuts, which is a clear choking hazard, cautions Dr. Ruchi S. Gupta, a pediatrician and immunologist at Northwestern University, in an ACAAI video aimed at parents. Even peanut butter can be risky at that age, Gupta explains, because it’s thick and sticky.

Most colleges don’t have comprehensive programs to support students with food allergies, putting them at risk for life-threatening allergic reactions, according to a new study. “Our study found that while many colleges offer support for students with food allergy in the dining hall, the same support doesn’t carry over to organized sports, dormitories or social events” said lead author Dr. Ruchi Gupta, an associate professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University.

For children troubled by nightmares, comfort from parents is usually all that’s needed to soothe them. “Talk to them, hug them, kiss them – give them a lot of reassurance,” suggests Dr. Marc Weissbluth, a clinical professor emeritus of pediatrics at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago who has studied sleep issues in children. In addition to nightmares, another common frightful sleep problem some children face is night terrors, which usually begin within a couple hours of a child falling asleep. “It can last five to 15 minutes and the child looks panicky – very frightened,” he notes.

In an editorial accompanying the study report, Dr. Robert Bonow and Dr. Clyde Yancy, both from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, wrote that the findings are significant. Study researchers “provide compelling evidence that statins reduce mortality even when measured at only one year of exposure and that the reduction in mortality is greater with high-intensity statin therapy,” Bonow and Yancy wrote. One caveat, however, is that the findings should be interpreted with caution because they run counter to those from randomized clinical trials, the editorial said.

In an editorial accompanying the study report, Dr. Robert Bonow and Dr. Clyde Yancy, both from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, wrote that the findings are significant. Study researchers “provide compelling evidence that statins reduce mortality even when measured at only one year of exposure and that the reduction in mortality is greater with high-intensity statin therapy,” Bonow and Yancy wrote. One caveat, however, is that the findings should be interpreted with caution because they run counter to those from randomized clinical trials, the editorial said.

A hormonal disorder called polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, may affect up to 15% of women, says Dr. Andrea Dunaif, a professor of endocrinology at Northwestern University. “In PCOS, the ovaries are making an excess of male sex hormones,” Dunaif explains. These excess hormones can stimulate oil production, which leads to breakouts, she says. How can you tell the difference between normal breakouts and something like PCOS? Dunaif says the uptick in male sex hormones associated with PCOS often leads to infrequent menstrual periods, usually eight or fewer periods per year. All-the-time acne—not minor breakouts that happen once or twice a month—is another indicator of PCOS, she says.

More than 30 million Americans have eczema, or patches of red, thick, scaly, itchy skin. Older adults are at higher risk for asteatotic eczema, which often causes intense dryness and itchiness on the lower legs. Eczema crops up often in people with asthma or hay fever, but stress, dry heat, allergens, and fragrances and dyes in household products can set it off, too, says Jonathan Silverberg, M.D., director of the Northwestern Medicine Multidisciplinary Center for Eczema at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Studies have shown that the drug combination gives a stronger anti-cancer effect than either drug alone, but “we’ve known this is a double-edged sword” because of the risk of over-stimulating the immune system, said Dr. Jeffrey Sosman of Northwestern University in Chicago, who treated the two patients who died. “The big question is, is there enough advantage to using the combination, which is much more toxic, than a single drug,” he said.