Media Coverage

People who inherit a genetic disorder that causes high levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol have an increased risk for heart disease and hardened arteries, a new study finds.
The findings may help doctors explain the risks of familial hypercholesterolemia more clearly to patients. That’s important because the disorder can be treated with cholesterol-lowering drugs to decrease the risks for coronary heart disease and stroke, the investigators said.

“Clinician-patient discussions about guideline-supported therapies can be informed by this data,” according to the study authors, who were led by Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Written by Milly Turakhia is an anesthesiology resident at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

“We know that dads who are more involved can contribute really positively to their children’s development,” says Craig Garfield, an associate professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “And they do it in a unique way that can complement, but not necessarily mimic, the way moms contribute.”

Garfield is co-author of a research review published this week in Pediatrics, just in time for Father’s Day. Today’s fathers — whether they are biological, adoptive, step, foster or even involved grandfathers — have “a role expanded far beyond that of stereotypical disciplinarian, breadwinner and masculine role model,” says the report co-written with Michael Yogman, an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

“We know that smoking tobacco products and outside air pollution are linked to heart disease death,” said lead researcher Dr. Sumeet Mitter, a cardiovascular disease fellow at Northwestern University in Chicago.

“Our study, using exposure history and time, is the first to find a significant and independent increased risk for all-cause, total cardiovascular disease and heart attack deaths due to increasing lifetime exposures to household air pollution from kerosene or diesel burning,” Mitter added.

“A one-size-fits-all recommendation for coffee won’t work. Some people just can’t tolerate it,” Marilyn Cornelis, a Northwestern medical school professor, said at the time.

The difficulty of withdrawing treatment is a challenge that’s all too common, agreed Dr. Eytan Szmuilowicz, a palliative care physician at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Szmuilowicz, who was not associated with the study, added that doctors’ natural aversion to conflict complicates the issue further.

“We don’t know how to manage or negotiate it,” he told Reuters Health. “It is easier behind the scenes to complain that a treatment may be inappropriate, but we haven’t taken a step back to think if we are providing care that furthers a patient’s goals.”

Scientists I queried tended to emphasize the dangers of helminth use. “I do not advocate self-experimentation when the risks have not been clarified,” Stephen Hanauer, director of the Digestive Health Center at Northwestern Medicine, told me in an email. Joel Weinstock, whose research partly inspired the movement, ticked off more reasons purchasing unregulated parasites is a bad idea: You don’t know that you’re getting the species promised. Even if you are, you don’t know if the specimens are alive, or if you’re getting the appropriate numbers of them, or even what the appropriate numbers are.

Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, MD, chair of the department of preventative medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine

The playing field has changed when it comes to fatherhood. It’s a generation of dads who want to be more hands-on and engaged in the day-to-day care of their children. And there’s hard science to back up the benefits…Dr Craig Garfield, Northwestern Medicine researcher: “Fathers and fathers’ involvement has really been changing.”
Dr Craig Garfield is a dad and a researcher at Northwestern Medicine, whose own experience 18 years ago sparked his interest in the emerging cultural shift.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s policy bans gay or bisexual men who have sex with another man in the past 12 months from donating blood…. Brian Mustanski, the director of Northwestern University’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing—the first research institute in the U.S. to focus exclusively on LGBTQ health—and the codirector of the Third Coast Center for AIDS Research, says, “In the wake of the shooting this past weekend, many members of the LGBT community were trying to service their community, and donating blood is a really concrete way to help your community that had just been terrorized.”