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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The New York Times
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Many People Are Eligible for Paxlovid. Who Should Take It?
Most adults in the United States have one condition or another that makes them a candidate for Paxlovid, which can cut the risk of a severe case of Covid. Obesity, diabetes, depression, heart conditions and dozens of other issues all put people at high risk, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than two years after Paxlovid became widely available in the United States, and in the middle of yet another summer surge, patients and doctors are still frequently confused about who qualifies for the medication and exactly how beneficial it might be. It’s well-established that Paxlovid saves lives. But it can be costly, and it can interact with a lengthy list of medications. Some people avoid the drug, in part because they worry about experiencing a rebound case. One study found that only about 15 percent of people who were eligible for the medication took it when they had Covid. Your symptoms can come back after you recover from Covid, whether you took Paxlovid or not. While Pfizer researchers have estimated that just over 2 percent of people who take the drug experience rebound, outside estimates are closer to 14 percent. But the possibility of symptoms returning should not dissuade people from taking the medication, said Marc Sala, MD, a co-director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Covid-19 Center in Chicago.
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New York Times
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Late-Summer Travel Plans? You Might Want to Put On a Mask.
It is the height of the summer travel season: Airplanes and cruises are packed, hotels are booked, and travelers are crowding theme parks and attractions. Yet throughout the United States, Covid-19 is currently circulating at very high levels. During the peak of the pandemic, masks were ubiquitous in hotels, airports and other public places. They were required to fly, and many travelers donned them elsewhere to help reduce the transmission of the deadly coronavirus. Since the end of the mandate, and as travel has returned to or surpassed prepandemic levels, most travelers have abandoned preventive measures, particularly masks.“If you have symptoms and you have any question about it, I would wear a mask, just to protect other people,” said Marc Sala, MD, a co-director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Covid-19 Center in Chicago. Common symptoms of Covid include coughing, fever, sneezing, congestion, headaches, sore muscles, fatigue and gastrointestinal issues. Those who are asymptomatic but have been exposed to Covid may also consider masking. If you have tested positive during a trip but cannot delay traveling, you should wear a mask whenever you are around other people, Dr. Sala said.
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Crain’s Chicago Business
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Long COVID’s brain fog doesn’t lift for years
Neurological symptoms can linger even two or three years following a COVID-19 infection for more than 60% of those who contract the disease, scientists at Northwestern Medicine and the School of Medicine at CES University and the CES Clinic in Colombia have found. Their study found the symptoms of brain fog — cognitive dysfunction — was experienced by 60% of patients and fatigue was experienced by 74%. The two symptoms, along with depression, most affected long COVID patients whether their symptoms were severe or more mild, Northwestern said in a press release. In the longest COVID follow-up in Latin America, Igor J. Koralnik, chief of neuro-infectious diseases and global neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and Dr. Carolina Hurtado Montoya with the School of Medicine at CES University in Medellín, analyzed persistent neurological symptoms, cognitive function and quality of life in long COVID patients. The most common symptom of long COVID was fatigue, which 74 out of 100 patients experienced. Many long COVID patients also experienced muscle pain (42%), numbness or tingling (41%), sleep problems (46%) and anxiety (44%).
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TODAY
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Woman shocked when eye freckle turns into melanoma. This was her 1 symptom
Like many people with a freckle in the back of their eye, Debbie Hensley never knew she had one — until it potentially threatened her life. About 5% of Americans have a freckle in the back of their eye, known as a choroidal nevus, which is similar to a freckle or mole people have on their skin, according to the American Society of Retina Specialists. It’s not something a person can see, but is often picked up during a routine eye exam. These pigmented spots are usually harmless, says Christopher Bowen, MD, director of ocular oncology at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, who treated Hensley. “I definitely want to emphasize that most of the time, having a freckle in the back of the eye is not a problem,” Bowen tells. “Only 1 in 8,000 people with freckles in the back of the eye undergo additional mutations that would then cause a melanoma.” Hensley was one of those rare cases. It’s unknown why some of these spots change from benign to cancerous, Bowen notes. Most people know melanoma as the deadliest form of skin cancer, but it can also start in the eye. The best way to monitor any eye freckles is to have regular dilated eye exams with a photo of the back of the eye, he adds.
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Fox 32 Chicago
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Chicago’s Lurie Children’s Hospital secures $12M to study antibiotic use in treating pediatric pneumonia
Antibiotic resistance is a growing concern in the U.S., particularly when it comes to treating pediatric pneumonia. Doctors are now questioning whether antibiotics should be used at all for this condition. Chicago’s Lurie Children’s Hospital, in collaboration with the University of Utah Health, has been awarded $12 million to investigate this issue. Their study will compare two methods of using antibiotics for treating pneumonia in children. “When you think about the millions of children that are diagnosed with pneumonia in the United States each year and the millions of days of antibiotics that those children receive, often times unnecessarily, you can see how the return on investment in the long run for children’s health is really in the positive,” said Todd Florin, MD, MSCE, associate professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The research team will collaborate with 12 pediatric care offices to gather data over the next five years.
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NBC News
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NIH study to pinpoint long Covid diagnosis comes up short
Long Covid continues to evade a clear diagnostic test, researchers reported in a study published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The findings are part of the National Institute of Health’s RECOVER Initiative, a billion-dollar-plus effort launched in 2021 to research causes and treatments for the estimated 17 million Americans with long Covid. Patients in the study were determined to have long Covid based on a scoring system of 12 symptoms including brain fog, dizziness and palpitations, among others. Different symptoms were assigned different scores, and a long Covid diagnosis was met if the score reached a level of 12. Marc Sala, MD, a pulmonologist and co-director of the Comprehensive Covid Center at Northwestern Medicine, said the study was well done but noted that the results might be frustrating to the millions out there still suffering from the illness. “I think one of the criticisms that can be leveled against the study is that a lot of these labs that they sent are the same things that you get with your primary care doctor,” Sala said. “A lot of these tests weren’t exactly nuanced to looking for a novel reason for long Covid.” Sala said that while routine blood tests are often normal with his long Covid patients, more specialized testing — such as blood tests while a patient is exercising, or a CT scan after Covid pneumonia — turns up abnormal. He said patients, particularly those who are otherwise healthy and come in with an extraordinary amount of shortness of breath and fatigue, would need much more testing beyond what was done in the paper.
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New York Times
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Americans’ Struggle with Mental Health
It is no mystery why rates of anxiety and depression in the United States climbed in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. But then life began a slow return to normal. Why haven’t rates of distress returned to normal, too? Researchers say a big reason for this stubbornly elevated distress is young people, whose low mood was not linked to the pandemic. The share of young adults reporting anxiety and depression had been rising for about a decade before Covid struck. That continued throughout the pandemic — and did not ease as quickly when vaccines became available. This is likely because their symptoms were tied to problems other than the virus, like economic precarity, the housing crisis, social isolation and political turmoil, said Emma Adam, PhD, a psychologist at Northwestern. “There’s so many things affecting adolescents and young adults that are about uncertainty with their future,” Adam said. “And that hasn’t changed.” Age, of course, tracks with income. Adam’s team found that people between the ages of 18 and 39 were half as likely to live in their own home as their counterparts over 40. That means they were especially vulnerable to inflation, rent increases and job loss — just as they faced big decisions like whether to have children or own a home.
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TIME
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Do You Really Store Stress in Your Body?
f you get enough back aches, someone will eventually tell you that’s where your body stores stress. If your stomach hurts, you’ll hear the same thing: Your emotions are trapped in your belly. But what does that mean? Is your anxiety about work or money really coursing through your body and nestling into your organs and limbs? In short, no. “We can and do manifest stress physically. There’s no question about it,” says Steven Tovian, PhD, a clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. “But it’s not like there’s a stress reservoir to the left of our kidneys—and when it bubbles over or overflows, we’ve got problems. It’s not that kind of boiling-cauldron analogy.” Unfortunately, the truth is that stress lives everywhere inside your body. Here’s what really happens in your body when you’re stressed. The type of stress you’re dealing with—and its frequency, duration, and intensity—plays a role in determining how it might manifest in your body. There are a number of different types: acute (sitting in a traffic jam), episodic (work projects that pop up occasionally), chronic (losing a job, getting divorced, or dealing with a long-term illness), and traumatic (childhood abuse). “Stress is not one entity,” Tovian says. While acute stress, for example, is typically fleeting and can be resolved by calming regimens like deep breathing, leaving no lingering effects in its wake, other types of stress require more vigilance.
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ABC 7 Chicago
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Grandfather shares experience after awake kidney transplant surgery at Northwestern Medicine
Grandfather shares experience after awake kidney transplant surgery at Northwestern Medicine. Harry Stackhouse was diagnosed with COVID-19 in December 2019, which is when doctors noticed one of his kidneys was failing, and the other was only working at 2%, according to Northwestern. On July 15, Stackhouse underwent a surgery that took just under two hours. He said he did not feel anything and has been able to go on one-mile walks everyday since being discharged. Satish Nadig is the transplant surgeon and director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Transplant Center who performed Stackhouse’s transplant. “Patients who have cardiopulmonary disease may be at higher risk for general anesthesia,” Dr. Nadig said. “There are also some patients around the country who have had complications from their intubations in the past and do not want to be intubated. An awake kidney transplant procedure could be their best option.”
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ABC 7 Chicago
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Grandfather shares experience after awake kidney transplant surgery at Northwestern Medicine
A Zion man is the second to recover from an awake kidney transplant at Northwestern Medicine. Harry Stackhouse was diagnosed with COVID-19 in December 2019, which is when doctors noticed one of his kidneys was failing, and the other was only working at 2%, according to Northwestern. One of his daughters offered to donate her kidney to him. Stackhouse fit the criteria for what Northwestern Medicine is hoping to do as it establishes the Accelerated Surgery Without General Anesthesia in Kidney Transplantation program, also known as the AWAKE Kidney Program. Satish Nadig, MD, PhD is the transplant surgeon and director of the Northwestern Medicine Comprehensive Transplant Center who performed Stackhouse’s transplant. “Patients who have cardiopulmonary disease may be at higher risk for general anesthesia,” Dr. Nadig said. “There are also some patients around the country who have had complications from their intubations in the past and do not want to be intubated. An awake kidney transplant procedure could be their best option.”
