Media Coverage

Low-income families with children with allergies spend more than twice as much on visits to emergency rooms and hospitals than mid- to high-income families, recent research from Northwestern University found. And about 40 percent of those children surveyed also reported experiencing life-threatening reactions to food, such as trouble breathing and a drop in blood pressure. “The fact that they were able to open up a food pantry for kids who can’t afford the special foods for food allergies — incredible,” said Dr. Ruchi Gupta, an associate professor of pediatrics who led the Northwestern study, which was published in April.

Low-income families with children with allergies spend more than twice as much on visits to emergency rooms and hospitals than mid- to high-income families, recent research from Northwestern University found. And about 40 percent of those children surveyed also reported experiencing life-threatening reactions to food, such as trouble breathing and a drop in blood pressure. “The fact that they were able to open up a food pantry for kids who can’t afford the special foods for food allergies — incredible,” said Dr. Ruchi Gupta, an associate professor of pediatrics who led the Northwestern study, which was published in April.

Low-income families with children with allergies spend more than twice as much on visits to emergency rooms and hospitals than mid- to high-income families, recent research from Northwestern University found. And about 40 percent of those children surveyed also reported experiencing life-threatening reactions to food, such as trouble breathing and a drop in blood pressure. “The fact that they were able to open up a food pantry for kids who can’t afford the special foods for food allergies — incredible,” said Dr. Ruchi Gupta, an associate professor of pediatrics who led the Northwestern study, which was published in April.

The race to find a cure or prevention for Alzheimer’s disease is happening all around the world, but there’s a lot of hope riding on two studies being conducted in Chicago at Northwestern Medicine’s Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center. One of them is a clinical trial of a drug that’s being called potentially revolutionary. While it may still be years before its efficacy is known, researchers are cautiously optimistic that it could be a turning point in the fight against dementia.

With constant research on different ways to curb inconsistent sleeping patterns and disorders, Phyllis Zee, M.D., director of the Sleep Disorders Centre at Northwestern Medicine came up with a study that examined the effect of aerobic exercise on middle-aged and older adults with a diagnosis of insomnia.

“We need a lot more nonsteroidal options, and [crisaborole] looks like it may be an important addition to our armamentarium,” says Jonathan Silverberg, a dermatologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “We have limited options for the thing we can safely give patients without worries about their long term use.”

For 6.7 million American women of child-bearing age, getting pregnant is not an easy task. Specialists now have a way to test the parents-to-be that may not only increase their chances of getting pregnant but also reduce the risk of them passing on certain genetic diseases. “When we do pre-implantation genetic screening, we can ensure that the embryos are chromosomally normal before transferring them back to the intended mother’s uterus, and that increases the likelihood of implantation,” Dr. Jared Robbins, an associated professor in obstetrics and gynecology-reproductive endo & infertility at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, told Fox News.

Over the last 15 years, the Food and Drug Administration has approved numerous high-risk women’s health devices based on weak clinical studies, including some that showed no effectiveness, according to an analysis by Northwestern University researchers. “Device regulation is just so much weaker than drug regulation, and it doesn’t make any sense,” said Steve Xu, a Northwestern physician and health-policy researcher, who coauthored the analysis in the June issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology. “The argument is that more rigorous regulation would decrease innovation. But I would say that has not been demonstrated.”

Dr. William Catalona, a professor of urology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said he worried that some younger men may find out too late that their cancer has become incurable. Active surveillance, he warned, “is a tragic mistake for some.”

In an accompanying editorial, Lee Jampol and Debra Goldstein of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine suggest doctors perform thorough eye exams on all babies with microcephaly in areas with Zika outbreaks. “We’re very concerned about this,” said Jampol, a professor of ophthalmology at Northwestern. “There hasn’t been enough testing yet to know what these babies’ vision is going to be.”