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.

  • Fox News

    Doctors need to know if patients are skipping pills

    Many doctors don’t have a good way of knowing whether patients are skipping medication doses, new research suggests. The physicians in the study agreed it’s important to talk about medication adherence with their patients – but still, the topic rarely came up during office visits. Dr. Neil Stone of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago and his co-author Rosemary Hines surveyed 21 doctors and 66 patients at four cardiology practices in Chicago during the summer of 2015. Overall, 61 percent of the patients said they rarely or never talked with their doctors about how often they took their medications. Eight patients had poor adherence – but in only one of those cases did the doctor realize it. Thirty-six patients had only moderate adherence.

  • Chicago Tribune

    5 things to know about the listeria outbreak

    In pregnant women, listeriosis can cause miscarriages or stillborn births. It can be fatal for the elderly and those with suppressed immune systems, said Dr. John Flaherty, a professor of infectious diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. For everyone else, an infection might present symptoms typically associated with food poisoning — nausea, diarrhea and vomiting. Listeria, the microscopic organism that causes the infection, is extremely common, though, and typically goes unnoticed. “If we were to swab most people’s refrigerators, you’d probably find it,” Flaherty said. “It’s hard to escape it.”

  • CBS News

    Children with food allergies from low-income homes may suffer more

    A family’s income may play a big role in the type of care a child with food allergies receives, a new study suggests. The researchers found that poorer families — those making under $50,000 a year — spent less on non-allergenic foods, medical specialists and important medications, such as lifesaving epinephrine injectors. As a result, “poor people may therefore be experiencing more food allergy reactions,” said study co-author Dr. Ruchi Gupta. She’s the director of the Program for Maternal and Child Health at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

  • Newsweek

    New Technique Shows ‘Sparks’ Fly At Moment Of Conception

    Researchers have come up with a new method to visualize this event, which appears like a spark of color being emitted from the cell. For the first time, scientists have now observed this “spark”—caused by the release of charged particles of zinc, a metal that plays a pivotal role in the metabolism and development of the egg and embryo—emitted from human eggs. Previous work on mouse embryos shows that eggs of higher quality produced stronger zinc “sparks,” and it’s likely that the same would hold true in humans, according to Teresa Woodruff, an expert in ovarian biology at Northwestern University.

  • CBS News

    Expectant mom’s flu shot offers protection for two

    The flu vaccine isn’t recommended for infants under 6 months of age because their immune systems can’t yet respond to the vaccine in a way that would allow them to develop enough protective antibodies, Dr. Tina Tan said. She’s a professor of pediatrics at Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, and was not involved with the study.

  • HealthDay

    Expectant Mom’s Flu Shot Protects 2

    The flu vaccine isn’t recommended for infants under 6 months of age because their immune systems can’t yet respond to the vaccine in a way that would allow them to develop enough protective antibodies, Dr. Tina Tan said. She’s a professor of pediatrics at Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, and was not involved with the study.

  • TIME Magazine

    Why Your Heart Disease Risk May Not Be as High as You Think

    Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, chair of preventive medicine at Northwestern University who contributed to the development of the AHA-ACC risk tool, acknowledges that it’s not perfect, but also finds fault with the Kaiser study. He points out that rather than being representative, the final patient population was relatively healthy; they could not have had a prescription for a statin or a heart event in the past five years. This group is similar to the older, healthy person who might be considered at high risk just because of his age. “They’re trying to answer, ‘Does the risk score work in the real world clinical population?’” he says. “I don’t think they’re left with the real world clinical population.”

  • The Washington Post

    There’s a new sheriff in town in Silicon Valley – the FDA

    Massimo Cristofanilli, an oncologist at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, has used Guardant Health’s test on more than 200 breast cancer patients with late-stage disease and said it has been helpful in about 6o to 70 percent of cases to determine a next course of treatment. He sees FDA approval as critical for widespread adoption.
    “Physicians, especially community physicians, won’t feel comfortable until they have more of a guarantee that the tests are doing what they are supposed to be doing,” he said.

  • Chicago Tribune

    Landmark heart disease study marks 30 years of research

    CARDIA examines how socio-economics, living habits, environment and several other factors affect wellness and aging. Now in its 30th year, the study has yielded hundreds of research papers cited thousands of times in other medical publications.
    “It really has become the premier study that has looked at the aging process from young adulthood to middle age,” said Northwestern cardiologist Dr. Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, the principal investigator for the Chicago CARDIA field office. “This has really taught us a lot about the precursors (to heart disease) and how those risks develop as we age.”

  • Chicago Tribune

    1st-year med school students get real world experience saving man’s life

    As Carla Berkowitz walked up to classmates Jessica Quaggin-Smith and Max Kazer on Monday afternoon at Lake Shore Park, not far from Northwestern Memorial Hospital, she noticed a shirtless man in gym shorts and black sneakers leaning back on a nearby bench with his head tilted back…The trio, students at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, rushed over to him. They said they saw that the man’s eyes were glazed, his lips a bluish color and his skin was pale. He appeared unconscious.