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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USA Today
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70% of Americans aren’t getting restorative sleep, new study finds
While seven in 10 Americans are spending the recommended number of hours in the sack, just three in 10 are getting the right amount of good quality sleep to leave them feeling alert, cognitively sharp and energetic – or simply, “restored” – in the morning, a new study finds. Dr. Sabra Abbott, commended the researchers for devising a method to evaluate the quality of a person’s sleep. However, with regard to the finding that just three in 10 Americans have good sleep, “I would take that with a huge grain of salt,” said Abbott, sleep specialist and assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “How someone feels in the morning isn’t necessarily correlated with how well they slept, Abbott said. “Alertness, mood and energy could be related to the quality of sleep but they could also be related to other factors,” she added.
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New York Times Magazine
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The Quest by Circadian Medicine to Make the Most of Our Body Clocks
Many of us are passingly familiar with circadian rhythms as a way to refer to our sleep cycle. In the past two decades, however, researchers have discovered that the clock in the brain is by no means the only one in our body. It turns out that most of our cells contain a group of genes that might be thought of as gears in a mechanical watch, keeping time everywhere internally. Being exposed to light when your body ought to be resting, can have a significant negative impact. In March, Phyllis Zee, a neurologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, reported in PNAS that just one night of moderate light exposure during sleep impaired glucose and cardiovascular regulation in otherwise healthy young study participants; over time, these changes could increase the risk of heart disease and diabetes. Last month, a publication in Sleep co-authored by Zee linked any nighttime light exposure during sleep to substantial increased risk of obesity, diabetes and hypertension in older adults.
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US News & World Report
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Common Lung Function Test Often Misses Emphysema in Black Patients
The most common test of lung function, spirometry, probably is not detecting signs of emphysema in some people with the lung ailment, a new study says. In particular, Black men were at greater risk of suffering from undiagnosed emphysema, since the way spirometry results are interpreted appears to “normalize” their bad lung function, said lead researcher Dr. Gabrielle Liu, an instructor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The equations used to analyze spirometry results “incorporate race, and they basically normalize having a lower lung function if you’re a Black adult compared to a white adult,” Liu said. “Physicians now could consider ordering CT scans on patients who have normal spirometry, who also have respiratory symptoms to see if there’s any evidence of emphysema. And if they do find emphysema, the physician should really be discussing mitigating any potential risk factors that a patient could have,” said Liu.
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NBC 5 Chicago
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What is Long COVID and What Are the Symptoms?
For some who test positive for COVID, symptoms can last much longer as part of a condition known as “long COVID.” Newer variants including the highly contagious BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants currently making up a majority of cases in the Midwest, are leading to an increase in those experiencing symptoms. A recent study from Northwestern Medicine showed that many so-called COVID “long-haulers” continue to experience symptoms like brain fog, tingling, headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, tinnitus and fatigue an average of 15 months after the onset of the virus. “Long-haulers,” are defined as individuals who have had COVID symptoms for six or more weeks, the hospital system has said. Long-COVID symptoms can range from a wide variety of ailments, some of which may even disappear and then return later.
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USA Today
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Monkeypox is not a gay disease. But LGBTQ leaders say they need more help for gay men and everyone else
Healthcare and LGBTQ leaders are warning monkeypox will continue to spread among gay men and other Americans if more isn’t done to address vaccine shortages and help health professionals combat the virus. They are demanding more testing kits, vaccines and additional health workers to limit the outbreak. Lauren Beach, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine whose research focuses on health equity among sexual and gender minorities, said it is dangerous for health officials to dismiss monkeypox as an LGBTQ illness, which could result in a more muted response and non-LGBTQ people also not getting necessary care. “Monkeypox, like any other transmissible condition, can be spread wherever the virus is allowed to thrive. Any human is going to be susceptible to monkeypox and so, I think that if we just attribute the virus to a certain set of people, that could result in stigmatizing LGBT people as carriers of a plague, when we see that happening before with HIV,” she said.
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Yahoo! News
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The #1 Cause of Obesity According to Physicians
Obesity is officially a public health crisis in the US, with over 41% of adults and almost 20% of children classed as obese. “This country is facing what I would call an epidemic, but we still have a healthcare system that’s not prepared to handle this population,” says Dr. Robert Kushner, an obesity medicine specialist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The main causes of obesity, according to experts, include, genetics, sleep problems, stress and bad diet. Studies further show that obesity is linked to a higher risk of COVID-19 complications.
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MSN online
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Doctors Fearing Legal Blowback Are Denying Life-Saving Abortions
Hospitals and doctors are struggling to toe the line between providing life-saving measures for women and wadding into a legal gray area that’s emerged in the absence of abortion rights. Now physicians are grappling with the added stress of having to determine when it’s legally okay to intervene. There’s also the question of what happens when a patient has to undergo a treatment like chemotherapy, which can be toxic to a fetus. One commonly prescribed drug that doctors say is becoming harder to get for patients is methotrexate. It treats chronic disease like rheumatoid arthritis, but it raises the risk of birth defects and pregnancy loss. Rosalind Ramsey-Goldman, the Gallagher research professor of rheumatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, is concerned that denying patients access to methotrexate will reverse decades of medical progress. In the 1980s, patients with rheumatoid arthritis developed significant deformities when methotrexate wasn’t used in treatment early on. “This is what the rheumatologists are distraught about, especially those of us that have been around for a while,” she said. “To go back to what was happening in the ’80s and before, that is just unbearable.”
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NPR
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Over-the-counter birth control pills are available worldwide. The U.S. may be next
A pharmaceutical company based in Paris is seeking approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for an over-the-counter birth control pill. The pill includes progestin only, not estrogen, and is known as a mini pill. If approved, it would be the first oral contraceptive available in the U.S. without a prescription. The lower-risk profile may make it easier to win over-the-counter approval. “The progesterone-only pill as the first over-the-counter pill in the United States would make a lot of sense,” says Dr. Melissa Simon, a professor of clinical gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Because this specific birth control pill does not contain the hormone estrogen, it carries a lower risk of blood clots, which is a risk factor that medical providers screen for when prescribing birth control pills. The FDA review process is expected to take about 10 months, with a decision expected in 2023.
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WebMD
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Fertility Doctors, IVF Families, Post-Roe: ‘We’re Anxious’
“Personhood” legislation has the potential to upend many common IVF practices, experts say. Of greatest concern to fertility practices are potential restrictions on the freezing or discarding of embryos. Most children born in the U.S. as a result of IVF procedures are born from frozen embryos. “The practice of IVF really requires that we generate more embryos than will be used in a given cycle,” says Kara Goldman, MD, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and medical director of the fertility preservation program at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. In nature, she says, it’s known that only a small number of eggs will be competent to generate a baby. When patients have completed their family, unused embryos are donated to research, donated for adoption or destroyed. If embryo destruction is outlawed, Goldman says, it will have serious ramifications for the practice of IVF. And if personhood legislation prohibits destroying any embryos, others wonder: would a lab technician who accidentally dropped and destroyed an embryo be subject to charges? If an embryo is declared a person, it could also affect a practice called preimplantation genetic testing, or PGT.
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Yahoo! News
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5 Supplements to Take Out of Your Cart Now
There are more than 29,000 supplements on the market, with another 1000 being launched every year, according to the FDA – but many are a waste of money if not downright dangerous. “Patients ask all the time, ‘What supplements should I be taking?’ They’re wasting money and focus thinking there has to be a magic set of pills that will keep them healthy when we should all be following the evidence-based practices of eating healthy and exercising,” says Jeffrey Linder, chief of general internal medicine in the department of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Supplements you don’t need include vitamins A and E, beta carotene, iron, copper, vitamin C and COVID-19 supplements. Dr. Linder says it is more important to take care of your body by eating well and practicing physical activity, rather than try to make up for that with supplements.
