Drinking cocoa rich in flavonols – plant compounds also found in fruits, vegetables and tea – might make walking easier for some older adults with poor circulation, a study suggests.

“Numerous studies going back to the late 1990s have consistently shown that sexual minority youth are about three times more likely to report making a suicide attempt,” said Brian Mustanski, co-author of an editorial accompanying both studies, and director of the Northwestern Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing in Chicago.

Nearly half of antibiotic prescriptions for Medicaid patients appear to be inappropriate, new research suggests. “Indiscriminate use of antibiotics is increasing the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and rendering them ineffective,” said senior author Dr. Jeffrey Linder, chief of general internal medicine and geriatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago.

Patients widely received antibiotics with no record of seeing a doctor, a nationwide study found, despite recommendations that doctors physically screen patients to prevent unnecessary prescriptions that could contribute to superbugs. Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Northwestern University looked through a decade of medical bills for 53 million people nationwide.

On Monday, a group of prominent researchers pushed back, publishing a large study in JAMA Internal Medicine that once again highlighted the potential harms of a meat-heavy diet. The researchers analyzed data on a diverse group of thousands of people who were followed for an average of three decades.

If you have worries about HPV, you are not alone. Every year, millions of young women get the stomach-dropping notification that human papillomavirus was detected on a routine Pap. Dr. Lauren Streicher is a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and medical director of the Northwestern Medicine Center for Sexual Medicine and Menopause and a regular contributor at TODAY.

In an era of online shopping and global shipping, some NPR listeners have written to us with this question: Am I at risk of catching the new coronavirus from a package I receive from China?
Infectious disease specialists we spoke with were even more definitive. “It’s not going to be transported on a box,” says Dr. Michael Ison of Northwestern University, who studies viral infections among transplant patients, who have weakened immune systems.

Northwestern University professor Karla Satchell is one of the scientists around the world racing to stop a new and deadly coronavirus. She’s working with a team investigating the virus structure to halt it from replicating in human cells

Karla Satchell, a professor of microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, is leading a team of U.S. and Canadian researchers to examine the atomic structure of the virus, which originated in Wuhan, China, in the Hubei province. Satchell leads the Center for Structural Genomics of Infectious Diseases, a consortium of nine labs at eight schools collaborating on this effort.

At unprecedented speed, scientists are starting experiments, sharing data and revealing the secrets of the pathogen — a race that is made possible by new scientific tools and cultural norms in the face of a public health emergency.

“The pace is unmatched,” said Karla Satchell, a professor of microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.