The discovery was so novel, scientists coined a new term to describe it: mitoautophagy, Northwestern Medicine said in a statement. These self-destructive mitochondria could become the target of drug therapies to fight diseases like ALS. “I think we have found the culprit that primes neurons to become vulnerable to future degeneration: suicidal mitochondria,” senior study author Pembe Hande Ozdinler, associate professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in the statement. “The mitochondria basically eat themselves up very early in the disease. This occurs selectively in the neurons that will soon degenerate in patient’s brains.”

Partnering with Endeleo are groups such as Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, the Alzheimer’s Association, the American Heart Association and local medical centers, clinics, colleges and banks. The institute is establishing storefronts offering health information and will install a blood pressure measurement kiosk inside Trinity United Church of Christ. Under the leadership of Rev. Otis Moss III, the church encourages its congregation to explore beyond traditional favorite fried foods and try dishes like baked fish and vegetables.

The discovery is important, says AIDS researcher Thomas Hope, professor of cell and developmental biology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, because fighting a virus like HIV requires knowing your enemy. “It’s important for us to understand all the strains that are out there, it’s important for us to understand that the (test) we are using will catch this new virus.” Current treatments for HIV, which can reduce viral load and prevent illness, are effective against variants of the HIV virus, including the new subtype, meaning that a new strain is not a new public health crisis.

“It could be the environment, diet, exposure to issues in their life experience,” noted Dr. Clyde Yancy, national spokesperson for the American Heart Association and chief of cardiology at Northwestern University in Chicago. It could also be “something they were exposed to, like violence and trauma,” he noted in a phone interview. The study was not designed to determine how stress might raise hypertension risk and cannot say whether reducing stress would lower that risk, Spruill said.

Sad to say so long to the streaming sun and warm summertime air? It only makes sense that we are. Here comes the season of closed windows, more gray skies, and (for some of us) waking up in complete darkness. All of those things are reasons enough to wake up feeling a little less chipper during the winter months than you might feel during the warm days of summer, explains Kevin Most, DO, Chief Medical Officer and a family medicine physician at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital.