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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CBS News Chicago
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A mom’s journey is a sign of hope for starting a family after cancer treatment
The day before a couple was going to start in vitro fertilization, or IVF, the mother-to-be, Ionna Lo Destro got a shocking diagnosis. She had leukemia. Ioanna did not even have time to preserve her eggs. Kara Goldman, MD, fertility preservation director at Northwestern Medicine, helps patients like Ioanna. Dr. Kara Goldman, fertility preservation director at Northwestern Medicine, helps patients like Ioanna. Goldman said doing IVF during cancer treatment can be risky. “They might have very low platelets—making it likely that they would bleed during a procedure,” she said. “They may have very low white blood cell counts—putting them at a high risk of infection.” However, three years later, Ionna’s cancer was in remission so she continued the long-delayed IVF and a year later had a daughter. Goldman said there is a message of hope that goes beyond just one family too. “I think the lesson is that, you know, where there is hope of parenthood, there is often a way,” said Dr. Goldman. Dr. Goldman said time is also a big cost of cancer treatment for couples waiting to have a baby, like the Lo Destros. But they can still have the family they dream about.
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New York Times
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8 Factors That Put You at Risk of Severe Flu
A new analysis by the C.D.C., which examined flu-related hospitalizations from 2010 to 2023, unpacks some of the factors that put people most at risk of severe health outcomes. Age, neurological disorders, lung diseases, pregnancy, obesity and chronic metabolic diseases, heart disease, high blood pressure and vaccination status are among the main contributors. About half of adults hospitalized with the flu have heart disease, according to the C.D.C. People with cardiovascular disease tend to be older adults with less robust immune systems, said Sadiya Khan, MD, MSc, a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine. Studies have shown that flu increases the risk of heart attack and stroke in people with cardiovascular disease, she said. “People who have heart disease are less able to tolerate the stress of the infection itself,” she said.Even if you are vaccinated, it’s important to watch out for symptoms that might warrant medical care, like difficulty breathing and chest pain. Experts also recommend seeking care if you have other flu symptoms, such as a fever or cough, that don’t go away on their own within a week.
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New York Times
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Disillusioned by the Election, Some Black Women Are Deciding to Rest
Black women voters supported Kamala Harris in overwhelming numbers — upward of 90 percent cast ballots for her, according to some exit polls. However, Trump’s win, despite a long history of allegations of racism and sexism, was a ‘harsh reminder’ of the role racism could play in American politics. Many Black women are opting for a “rest era.” So what does a “rest era” look like? In interviews and online, some Black women said it could mean striving for more sleep, declining extra responsibilities at work or exploring new hobbies. Others said it might mean volunteering in local Black communities, eating more healthfully, spending time with loved ones or simply allowing themselves to grieve the election’s outcome or distance themselves from national politics. These public declarations of stepping back are a shift from the leadership role Black women have historically played in politics, said Inger Burnett-Zeigler, PhD, an associate professor of psychiatry at Northwestern University and author of the book “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen: The Emotional Lives of Black Women.” Black women have been at the vanguard of political and social movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, as well as mobilizations to elect Hillary Clinton in 2016 and President Biden in 2020. “It’s an important step in two things: in boundary setting and in recognizing what’s in your control,” Dr. Burnett-Zeigler said.
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WBEZ Chicago
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COVID-19’s silver lining? Researchers find the virus has ability to fight cancer
The COVID-19 virus may have the surprising ability to shrink some tumors, paving the way for new cancer treatments, a new study has found. The research, conducted at the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute and set to be the cover story for the November issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, began after a recent discovery. In some cases, cancer patients with a severe COVID-19 infection saw a temporary regression of their cancer, said Ankit Bharat, MBBS, chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Canning Thoracic Institute. “That was what really sparked our interest,” Bharat said. Bharat and his team, investigating why that regression happened, learned that the RNA within the COVID-19 virus triggers the development of a unique immune cell that can fight cancer. The findings will help develop a treatment that mimics how the virus makes those immune cells. The results show promise for treating some of the most common cancers, including melanoma, lung, breast and colon cancer, Bharat said. The study was done using both human tissues and animal models. Researchers found that the COVID-19 virus is able to transform the common monocyte, a white blood cell in the immune system, into a powerful immune cell. Those cells are then able to travel and attack cancer cells inside tumors. “It’s incredible, and a big surprise, that the same infection that caused so much devastation can help create a cancer-fighting cell,” Bharat said.
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Fox 32 Chicago
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Northwestern study links COVID-19 RNA to cancer-fighting cells
New research from Northwestern University shows a surprise connection between COVID-19 and cancer regression. Researchers found the RNA from the virus triggers a unique type of immune cell with anti-cancer fighting abilities. They say this new information opens the door for new research and a way to treat cancer. Doctors say this research was inspired by a trend they noticed during the pandemic. “Some patients who had stage four cancer, when they develop severe COVID, we found that some of their cancer sites or the cancer in several sites shrunk,” said Ankit Bharat, MBBS. So, researchers at Northwestern started their journey to figure out why this might be happening. They discovered when someone gets badly infected with COVID, the virus can actually enter the bloodstream, shedding its RNA. That gets circulated and becomes a very common immune cell called monocytes. “They convert these monocytes into friendly cells. Basically, they convert them into cells that protect those cancer cells against second invasion by the immune system of the host. So what we found was that the RNA of the COVID virus could convert these monocytes into not those cancer-friendly cells, but cancer-fighting cells,” said Bharat.
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TIME
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COVID-19’s Surprising Effect on Cancer
Viruses don’t often come with silver linings, and infections don’t generally lead to positive health effects. But during the pandemic, some doctors anecdotally began noticing that some people with cancer who got very sick with COVID-19 saw their tumors shrink or grow more slowly. “We didn’t know if it was real, because these patients were so sick,” says Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery at Northwestern University. “Was it because the immune system was so triggered by COVID-19 that it also started to kill cancer cells? What was it?” Bharat and his team decided conduct a study to find out if the seeming “benefit” of COVID-19 for these cancer patients could teach them anything about a potential new way to fight cancer—or if it was simply a red herring. They published their findings Nov. 15 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Another intriguing part of the equation, says Bharat, is that this pathway is independent of the T cell immune treatments that are becoming a big part of cancer therapy now, in which doctors boost the population of T cells that can recognize and attack cancer cells. They can be effective, but generally only work for a while, since cancers quickly find ways to circumvent the T cells and become resistant to the therapies.
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Reuters
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Health Rounds: Obesity-related heart disease deaths spike in US
Obesity-related deaths among U.S. adults with clogged heart arteries increased by 180% between 1999 and 2020, according to data released in advance of the American Heart Association scientific meeting in Chicago. In men, ischemic heart disease deaths associated with obesity rose from 2.1 per 100,000 people in 1999 to 7.2 per 100,000 in 2020, an increase of 243%, researchers found. In women, the rate increased by 131%, from 1.6 deaths per 100,000 people in 1999 to 3.7 per 100,000 in 2020. The increases were particularly marked among middle-aged men, Black adults, residents of Midwestern states and non-metropolitan areas, researchers found. Overall, the analysis of 21 years of data from a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention database identified 226,267 obesity-related ischemic heart disease deaths during that period. “The relative change in ischemic heart disease deaths related to obesity that was observed in this study between 1999 and 2020 was greater than the overall increase in obesity prevalence that we’ve seen in the United States, from about 30% to about 40% over this same time frame,” AHA spokesperson Sadiya Khan, MD, MSc of Northwestern School of Medicine in Chicago, said in a statement. Kahn, who was not involved in the study, suggested that greater awareness of obesity as a risk factor and more treatment for the condition may have made it more likely to be included on death certificates, which were the basis of the new data.
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ABC News
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Patients are stockpiling birth control over fears Trump could limit access to contraception
Women are stocking up on birth control and asking for long-term contraception methods following President Donald Trump being elected to a second term last week, doctors say. Searches for “birth control” and “Plan B” doubled between Nov. 2 and the two days after the election, with a notable spike the day after the election, Google Search data shows. Brittany Cline, MD, an OB-GYN at Northwestern Medicine, in Chicago, said she has seen an increase in the number of appointments being made for contraceptive or birth control counseling as well as appointments for long-acting contraceptives being either inserted or replaced or exchanged. “We have, in clinic, seen many patients coming in for their [intrauterine device] replacements, even this week,” she told ABC News. “On Monday, I used all of our intrauterine devices that the clinic had, and I think that this is going to continue over the next few months and even years down the line, as people try to take some control over their bodies.” Cline said she also received a message from a patient this week requesting four years of her birth control prescription be sent to a pharmacy. ‘That’s something that I have not, you know, seen before. Usually, we supply, you know, 12 months, one year at a time,” she said. “We do know that as many medications, there is a shelf life, and so it would not be safe for me to prescribe four years’ worth of contraception to a patient because of the shelf life.”
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Yahoo! News
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Researchers develop new material that paves path forward for medical device innovation: ‘This is a wholly new concept’
Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a new kind of material that could revolutionize multiple industries by the time it moves into production. Materials scientists have created “tiny, flexible nano-sized ribbons that can be charged just like a battery to store energy or record digital information.” The material is composed of sustainable materials and is biocompatible. As the material is in development, it could be used in low-power, energy-efficient microscopic memory chips and sensors, or it could be woven into clothing. “This is a wholly new concept in materials science and soft materials research,” said Northwestern’s Samuel I. Stupp, who headed the project. “We imagine a future where you could wear a shirt with air conditioning built into it or rely on soft bioactive implants that feel like tissues and are activated wirelessly to improve heart or brain function.” PVDF can generate electrical signals when pressed or squeezed, and its polar structure can flip via external voltage. While typical ferroelectric materials require a substantial amount of power to flip their polar structure, this new creation takes substantially less. “The energy required to flip their poles is the lowest ever reported for multiaxial soft ferroelectrics,” Stupp said. “You can imagine how much energy this will save in increasingly energy-hungry times.”
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The Washington Post
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Hospitals adjust as rates of maternal high blood pressure spike
Health researchers are noticing a growing problem in American pregnancies: more cases of blood pressure so high it can be deadly for the parent and baby. U.S. rates of newly developed and chronic maternal high blood pressure skyrocketed from 2007 through 2019, and researchers say they haven’t slowed down. Hospitals are working to adjust their standards of care to match best practices. One reason for the big increase in cases is that more doctors are looking out for the condition. But that’s not enough to explain the increase in the nation’s overall maternal death rate. Lifestyle and genetic factors play a role, but physician and health researcher Natalie Cameron, MD, MPH, with Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said people who don’t have risk factors going into pregnancy are also getting sick more often. More research is needed to understand why. “Pregnancy is a natural stress test. It’s unmasking this risk that was there all the time,” Cameron said. “And there’s a lot we don’t know.” Last year, the federal government boosted funding for training to expand implementation of best practices. But it takes time for hospitals to incorporate those kinds of changes, researchers said. Consistent monitoring for high blood pressure is key to keeping people safe.
