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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Chicago Tribune
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Health care specialists: In a triple epidemic, masks could save kids’ lives
Emergency department waiting rooms are bursting at the seams with children suffering from fevers and difficulty breathing. This is the face of an out-of-season surge of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, compounded by an early start to the influenza season: sick children, worried parents, exhausted healthcare workers and a struggling pediatric health care system. Although RSV can infect people of any age, a record number of children are infected with this potentially deadly virus during the respiratory illness season. The CDC reports that RSV infections are leading to a high hospitalization rate of 13.0 patients per 100,00 people and 145 per 100,000 for babies younger than 6 months. “Given the lack of capacity, staff and funding for medical care and public health, we need to take measures to prevent people from requiring scarce hospital resources in the first place. Fortunately, we have two effective public health tools at hand: vaccines and masks,” say both Seema Shah, associate professor of pediatrics (advanced general pediatrics and primary care), and Michelle Macy, associate professor of pediatrics (emergency medicine) at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Although the flu and COVID-19 have safe and effective vaccines, the CDC reports that fewer than 30% of children have received the seasonal flu vaccine and only 10% have gotten the bivalent COVID-19 booster. RSV has fewer options, with only an expensive monoclonal antibody treatment to prevent severe infection in children at high risk and unapproved vaccines that are still undergoing testing. The second tool is masking. With low rates of vaccination and high transmission rates, the most effective way to stay healthy is to wear high-quality masks in indoor settings, a response that a recent New England Journal of Medicine study shows was effective in public schools. This protects not only the wearer but also others, including people who are too young or who medically cannot receive a COVID-19 or flu vaccine.
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US News & World Report
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Illinois Study Show Big Jump in Suicide-Linked ER Visits by Teens
Illinois has seen a recent surge in the number of kids arriving in the emergency room for suicidal thoughts — both during and shortly before the pandemic, according to a new study. Experts said that while the findings come from one state, they reflect what’s been going on nationally. They also highlight a sobering fact: U.S. children and teenagers have been showing a deterioration in their mental health for years. “It’s absolutely not the case that this started with the pandemic,” said senior researcher Joseph Feinglass, PhD, and research professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Over the past two decades, suicide deaths have risen by more than 50% among U.S. teens and adults younger than 25. And a 2019 government study found that about one-third of high school students said they felt persistently sad or hopeless — a 40% increase from a decade before. He speculated that school-related stress could be one reason behind the national trends in suicide deaths of the past couple decades. But there could be many other things going on, too, Feinglass said. He pointed to the economic downturn and housing crisis that began in 2008, because when families suffer those strains, kids are affected, too. Social media is another potential culprit, Feinglass said. One way it could affect kids’ mental well-being is through the constant comparisons they make between themselves and others — not only with the peers they know, Feinglass noted, but with countless strangers online. Kids are not alone in their worsening mental health. Feinglass noted that so-called “deaths of despair” — from suicide, drugs and alcohol — have been rising for years among U.S. adults, particularly those who are working class and lack a college degree. That also means more kids living with parents or other family members with substance abuse problems and other mental health conditions, Feinglass said. “I do think there’s something about the broader American culture contributing to this,” he said. “There’s a social disintegration factor.” Both experts said it’s critical for kids to have caring adults in their lives. And that’s something many may lack, Feinglass said. “We need to surround kids with a community of adults who support them,” he said.
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Crain’s Chicago Business
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ER Visits by Youth with Suicidal Ideation Spiked in Fall of ’19
Researchers at Lurie Children’s and Northwestern University Feinberg medical school report that back in the fall of 2019, Illinois emergency departments experience a spike in visits from youth ages 5 to 19 with suicidal thoughts. While there was another uptick in 2020 when the pandemic began, the authors note that the Illinois data shows a pre-COVID crisis and is representative of a nationwide population. “A lot of people have talked about mental health problems in youth during the pandemic, but it was happening before the pandemic,” corresponding author Audrey Brewer, MD, MPH, instructor of pediatrics at Feinberg and a pediatrician at Lurie Children’s said in a statement. “This has been an issue for so long, and it’s getting worse.” Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the U.S. and has increased over 45% between 1999 and 2020, when more than 47,000 adolescents ages 10 to 19 died, the statement said. Although the data used in this study do not shed light on the reasons that suicidal ideation has spiked in recent years, senior author Joe Feinglass, PhD, research professor of medicine at Feinberg, surmised in the statement that it could be a combination of school-related stress, social isolation, including heavy social media exposure, growing hopelessness about climate change, political discord and gun violence, and family adversity, neglect or abuse, “This is like smoke,” Feinglass said of the study findings. “And there’s definitely a fire, but we don’t yet know and are not yet addressing what is causing the fire.”
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WTTW
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Study Finds Hair Straightening Chemicals Associated with Higher Risk of Uterine Cancer
A study from the National Institutes of Health last month showed women who use chemical hair relaxers or straighteners may have a higher risk of the cancer. A Missouri woman, Patrice Yursik is now suing five beauty companies — including L’Oréal — claiming the relaxers caused her uterine cancer at the age of 28. That diagnosis eventually led to a hysterectomy. Yursik says the need to chemically relax hair begins at a young age. “Many of us are taught from an early age that our hair is unmanageable or unprofessional or untidy, or of course it must be therefore tamed by these caustic chemicals and this is not just an American issue, this is global,” she said. June McKoy, MD, MPH, a professor of medicine and cancer researcher at Northwestern University, says the study’s findings are a big deal. “There are three or four components that are definite carcinogens. We know that the scalp absorbs things very well and it gets right into the system, and we know that we already know that this is a product people use repeatedly over time,” McKoy said. “ … We see high cancer rates among older adults over time exposure leaves cancer in some form.” McKoy is direct when it comes to the use of hair relaxers. “I would advise women strongly to stop using them. The association is so strong that I would advise not to use it,” she said.
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Crain’s Chicago Business
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Vaccine Rates, Herd Immunity ‘Going in the Wrong Direction’
The prospect of rising deaths from the flu coming in December and January, combined with a drop in the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccinations among children has a Northwestern Medicine infectious disease doctor worried about the cost of vaccine fatigue. “This is all going in the wrong direction. Not only are we having this bump up in flu cases and hospitalizations, but we are having fewer people get vaccinated. It’s the wrong time to slack off,” Robert Murphy, MD, executive director of the Robert J. Havey Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine said in a statement. Murphy warns that while people are tired of vaccines, with the most recent availability of what would be the 5th shot of COVID-19 vaccine to be recommended by the CDC, now is not the time to give up on them. “We have barely seen the influenza virus for the last one or two years, due to COVID-19 restrictions. We might have lost some of our previously acquired immunity due to the lack of viral circulation. Additionally, we now have pediatric populations that have never experienced this virus,” Ramon Lorenzo Redondo, PhD, assistant professor of medicine in infectious diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, added in the statement.
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The Washington Post
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New Weight-Loss Drugs Work, But Who’s Paying
After decades of failure, weight loss drugs seem finally poised to become big pharma’s newest blockbuster category. The enthusiasm is merited. These newer drugs offer more profound and sustained weight loss than any of the medicines that came before them. People are eager to try the new treatments. “The demand is overwhelming the workforce,” says Robert Kushner, MD, who specializes in obesity medicine at Northwestern Medicine. Also worth considering: The story about the long-term safety of this new generation of drugs is still being written. Past experience in the weight-loss arena has shown that side effects can emerge after the drugs hit the market. That worry is compounded by the drugs being potentially used in situations where there’s no evidence for their efficacy or safety.
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Associated Press
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Mindfulness worked as well for anxiety as drugs in study
Mindfulness mediation worked as well as a standard drug for treating anxiety in the first head-to-head comparison. The study tested a widely used mindfulness program that includes 2 1/2 hours of classes weekly and 45 minutes of daily practice at home. Participants were randomly assigned to the program or daily use of a generic drug sold under the name Lexapro for depression and anxiety. After two months, anxiety as measured on a severity scale declined by about 30% in both groups and continued to decrease during the following four months. The study “is reaffirming about how useful mindfulness can be when practiced effectively,” said psychologist Sheehan Fisher, PhD, an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine who was not involved in the study.
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The Washington Post
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Did pandemic stress change women’s periods?
During the pandemic, many women experienced high levels of stress as they took on a disproportionate share of child care and housework and dropped out of the labor force in large numbers. Now, a new study suggests that all of this extra stress may have changed women’s menstrual cycles in a variety of ways. Stress can affect a woman’s menstrual cycle in a number of ways. The stress hormone cortisol can affect the body’s production of estrogen and progesterone, which are reproductive hormones that influence the menstrual cycle. Stress-related factors, such as poor nutrition, weight gain, weight loss and poor sleep, also can play a role. Nicole C. Woitowich, a medical research assistant professor at Northwestern University, found a similar association between period changes and pandemic stress in 2020 after conducting an online survey of 210 women. Because it wasn’t a representative sample, the findings aren’t conclusive. But Woitowich said both studies, conducted a year apart, suggest that the pandemic affected women’s stress levels and menstrual cycles over a long period of time. “Women have really borne the brunt of the pandemic, from multiple facets,” Woitowich said. “From being the primary care giver, from dealing with remote learning, and often times working while navigating that as well.”
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TODAY
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A looming ‘tripledemic’ could make for a rough winter. Which states may be hit hardest?
With the flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) surging early this year, ahead of an expected increase in COVID-19 cases, hospitals should plan to be overwhelmed this winter. Experts told TODAY it’s likely that a potential “tripledemic,” as some are calling it, may hit some parts of the country harder, or at the very least, sooner. The tripledemic of 2022 refers to the possibility that COVID-19 and and seasonal influenza will surge as RSV, a common virus that primarily effects children under 1 and older adults, continues to send kids to the hospital. Even though flu and RSV may be a bit early, it’s typical in winter to see a surge of these viruses, Michael Angarone, DO, associate professor of infectious diseases at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, told TODAY. But this year is likely to be different: “What we are worried about is having the typical cold and flu seasons combined with SARS-CoV-2,” he said. The real fear around a tripledemic is the possibility that the three viruses will peak at the same time and inundate hospitals, filling every bed and stretching staff thin.
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US News & World Report
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‘SAD Season’: Depression Risks Rise as Days Get Shorter
As the daylight hours shrink, people’s moods can wind up in the tank. Rest assured, you’re not alone. It’s the SAD season for those affected by seasonal affective disorder. That’s the depression, fatigue and withdrawal that shorter days and longer nights often bring. “The seasonal mood change can come in different shapes and forms,” said Dr. Dorothy Sit, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “It can be a clinical diagnosis of depression, which we call SAD, but some people experience a milder form,” Sit said. “The clinical diagnosis means it is quite intense; it affects people all day for many weeks and can impact their functioning. In milder cases, people can feel a bit blah, but can push through. Still, functioning will feel a bit harder.” Besides feeling sluggish, people may be hungrier, crave carbohydrates, eat more and gain weight. They may also feel less motivated and find less enjoyment in activities. A major remedy for SAD is starting the day with bright light therapy. Sit recommends a unit that produces 10,000 LUX of white light to be used in the 30 minutes after waking up. “The treatment provides an uplift in the mood, improves a person’s functioning and may completely resolve their symptoms,” she noted. “It’s even effective for non-seasonal depression, depression in pregnancy and in certain people with bipolar depression.”
