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.

  • Yahoo! News

    Has Your Alcohol Tolerance Changed With Age? Or Could It Actually Be Perimenopause?

    Conversations about menopause and alcohol seem to be popping up on social media more lately. But doctors say their patients have been mentioning it for years — saying things like they suddenly feel tipsy after a single drink in their 40s and 50s or that alcohol generally makes them feel lousy. “This is not something new,” said Lauren Streicher, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University, and host of Dr. Streicher’s Inside Information: The Menopause Podcast. “I’ve been doing this for decades, and women have often said to me, ‘Boy, I just can’t drink anymore. It makes my hot flashes worse. I’m already sleeping terribly. It makes my sleep worse.’” While Streicher said there’s “probably a connection” between alcohol tolerance and perimenopause and menopause, it hasn’t been well studied.

  • New York Times

    Heart Failure Deaths Are Increasing. New Treatments Could Help.

    Heart failure is a condition that occurs when the heart can’t pump out enough blood and oxygen to meet the body’s needs. Deaths from it have been climbing steadily nationwide since 2012, wiping out earlier declines. Rising rates of metabolic disorders like obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure are likely contributing. There are medications to treat one of the two main types of heart failure, but they aren’t used as much as they should be, doctors said. High blood pressure is a major cause of heart failure, as are blocked arteries. High blood pressure increases the strain on your heart, while blocked arteries prevent the heart muscle from getting the oxygen it needs. Other risk factors are much the same as for heart attack and stroke, including obesity, diabetes and kidney disease. There are some additional risk factors specific to women, including menopause before age 45 and high blood pressure during pregnancy, said Sadiya Khan, MD, MSc, a preventive cardiologist at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. “We’ve made remarkable advances in how we can treat, but now we have to do the hard part which is make it affordable, accessible and equitable,” Dr. Khan said.

  • US News & World Report

    Juicing Diets Can Harm Health in Just 3 Days, Study Finds

    Juice cleanses are a popular way to kickstart a health journey, but these diets may do more harm than good in as little as three days. A study published recently in the journal Nutrients found that consuming vegetable and fruit juice-only diets for three days triggered detrimental gut and oral bacteria changes linked to inflammation, memory and thinking problems. Exactly how juice-only cleanses trigger such changes is not fully understood, but researchers suggest it may owe to the lack of fiber in juice. “Most people think of juicing as a healthy cleanse, but this study offers a reality check,” said study author Melinda Ring, MD, FACP, ABOIM, director of the Osher Center for Integrative Health at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “Consuming large amounts of juice with little fiber may lead to microbiome imbalances that could have negative consequences, such as inflammation and reduced gut health,” she said in a news release. When fruits or veggies are juiced, much of the fiber is stripped away. Fiber feeds good bacteria that produce anti-inflammatory compounds. Researchers said the findings point to a need for a deeper look at how juice and other diets affect the microbiome, especially in kids who often drink juice in lieu of eating fruit.

  • NBC 5 Chicago

    Chicago school closings today: Full list of schools closed, delayed amid extreme cold

    As many as seven Chicago-area schools had announced delays, closures or e-learning Tuesday due as a cold weather advisory continues. According to the National Weather Service, wind chills as low as -30 degrees were possible in some parts Tuesday morning, with sub-zero wind chills to continue throughout the day. Dehydration from the cold can also occur, health experts warned, which could take people by surprise. “We usually associate dehydration with hot weather, but cold weather we are often able to get it too because you feel less thirsty and we tend to drink less fluids during that time,” Santina Wheat, MD, MPH with Northwestern Medicine said. “Additionally, when it’s cold outside, we are inside with indoor heating hopefully. That dry air can also increase the water loss that we have through evaporation.” Wheat recommends drinking fluids throughout the day and keeping a clean humidifier near by. If you don’t have a humidifier, she suggests putting a bowl of water near your heat source in your home. Wheat recommends drinking fluids throughout the day and keeping a clean humidifier near by. If you don’t have a humidifier, she suggests putting a bowl of water near your heat source in your home.

  • Washington Post

    How to keep your eyes healthy and your vision sharp

    Most people 40 and older should have a comprehensive eye exam and follow-ups (typically, every one to two years). That way, emerging problems can be caught early, when they’re more likely to respond to treatment, says Michelle Andreoli, an ophthalmologist at Northwestern Medicine in Illinois and a clinical spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Your eye doctor will assess your vision and ocular health, but you should also stay attuned to any potential issues in between appointments. To help, here are eight eye problems that often arise as we get older, along with expert advice on how to prevent, spot and handle them. While certain eye problems progress over time, others may be fast-moving and need immediate care.Vision changes that call for fast action include sudden vision loss, blurriness, a shower of floaters, a curtain or shade across your sight, double vision, and severe pain in the eye, especially if it’s accompanied by nausea or headache.

  • US News & World Report

    Expert: Vaccinations, Information Key to Combating Intense Flu Season

    The current flu season appears to be one of the worst the U.S. has seen in years. Between Oct. 1 and Feb. 8, there were between 29 million and 51 million influenza cases in the U.S., according to a preliminary assessment by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Tina Tan, MD – a professor of pediatrics at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America – says a key factor this flu season has been a drop in vaccinations compared to previous years, fueled by vaccine hesitancy that increased in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. “If people aren’t vaccinated they’re not going to be protected, and you’re definitely going to see more people come down with influenza because it’s being transmitted in the community,” Tan says. “People who are very young, or older, or who have underlying conditions are going to get sick and they’re going to get hospitalized.”

  • Chicago Tribune

    Game-changing lung refrigerator serves transplant patients at Northwestern Medicine

    The lungs that Ankit Bharat, MBBS took out of Tadd Crosslin, a 49-year-old father of twins, were marred with billions of cancer cells. They were “perhaps the most diseased that we’ve ever seen,” said Bharat, a thoracic surgeon and director of Northwestern Medicine’s Canning Thoracic Institute. A technology the institute adopted just months ago was a game changer for Crosslin, whose lungs were fused so tightly to his chest cavity that doctors needed extra time to delicately remove them. The innovative technology, a lung refrigerator, was used in a dozen of the 148 lung transplants the Chicago health system performed in 2024. These days, it’s being used in “pretty much every” transplant. “It’s going to become the new norm,” Bharat said during a news conference at Northwestern Medicine’s Streeterville campus last week. The fridge allows the health system’s organ procurement team to travel greater distances for lungs, increasing access to donor lungs and thus shrinking wait times for transplant patients, according to Ambalavanan Arunachalam, MD, a pulmonologist with the thoracic institute who also spoke at the news conference and assistant professor of medicine (pulmonary and critical care) at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.. When donor lungs can be stored until doctors are ready to tranplant them, more time can be spent getting the lungs to Chicago. The 148 lung transplants the health system performed last year were the most it has ever done in a year. And now Northwestern Medicine is the highest volume lung transplant center in the U.S., according to the health system. More than 600 transplants have been performed since the health system launched its lung transplant program in 2014.

  • WGN Chicago

    AI-powered fitness revolutionizing workouts with adaptive equipment

    The age-old commitment to fitness is sprinting into new territory with the addition of artificial intelligence to gym equipment and apps. But there could be risk in racing toward the future of fitness, overcomplicating something that — for most people — should be simple. “I think that AI has a lot of potential and a lot of promise, but I don’t actually think it’s necessary for a good workout or to get active,” said Siobhan Phillips, PhD, MPH, a professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Phillips runs Feinberg’s Exercise and Health Lab. “Ultimately the best exercise is the one that you do and you will continue to do,” she said. The CDC recommends 150 minutes of aerobic exercise each week – like a brisk 30-minute walk, 5 times a week – plus two days of strengthening exercises that target all major muscle groups in the body. Proponents of AI are optimistic its impact on the industry is only in its warm-up.

  • New York Times

    Flu Cases Are Surging

    The high case counts right now are striking, given that this is the time of year when flu typically starts to slow down, said Susan R. Russell, MD, medical director at the medical intensive-care unit at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago and associate professor of medicine (pulmonary and critical care) at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. But Dr. Russell said she was still seeing a flood of patients in the hospital sick with the flu. It’s not entirely clear why the current flu season has been so severe. Doctors said vaccination rates have not been as high as they would like to see: Roughly 46 percent of children and a similar share of adults have received a flu vaccination so far this season, according to preliminary C.D.C. data. Flu shots reduce the chance of infection, and might also help limit the spread of the virus to others. And some share of the cases could be a lingering consequence of pandemic lockdowns, when transmission of many common viruses slowed down as people practiced social distancing, Dr. Russell said. Our immune systems may still be out of practice after not having to fend off respiratory diseases during that time.

  • HealthDay

    Effect of Behavioral Intervention on Reducing Care Overuse in Seniors Not Sustained

    Clinical decision support (CDS) aimed at reducing overuse of care in seniors does not yield durable changes in terms of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening in older men, but is durable for reducing urinary overtesting, according to a research letter published online Feb. 11 in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Lucia C. Petito, PhD, from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues examined whether the effectiveness of a behavioral intervention to reduce overtesting and overtreatment of older adults in three areas persisted in the 12 months after intervention discontinuation.The researchers found that the intervention group, but not the control group, had an increase in the annual rate of PSA testing per 100 patients during the postintervention year. Per 100 eligible patients, the annual rate of urinalysis or urine culture was lower in the intervention versus the control group at the end of the postintervention period; neither rate changed meaningfully during the following year. “These findings suggest that to maintain benefits, CDS interventions aimed at reducing low-value care should generally be left in place or be provided on a less frequent schedule to reduce alert fatigue,” the authors write.