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
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Sleep apnea, lack of deep sleep linked to damage in brain, study says
Uncontrolled sleep apnea — a disorder in which people stop breathing for 10 seconds or more at a time multiple times a night — may harm future brain health, a new study found. Having more white matter hyperintensities can slow the brain’s ability to process information, pay attention and remember, experts say. Lower levels of white matter have also been connected to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and irritability. “Their findings are consistent with the literature that indicates sleep, including slow-wave sleep, plays an important role in maintaining brain health,” said sleep specialist Kristen Knutson, PhD, an associate professor of neurology and preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
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CBS News
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Sleep apnea, lack of deep sleep linked to damage in brain
Uncontrolled sleep apnea – a disorder in which people stop breathing for 10 seconds or more at a time multiple times a night – may harm future brain health, a new study found. People with severe sleep apnea who spent less time in deep, also known as slow-wave sleep, had more damage to the white matter of the brain than people who had more slow-wave sleep, according to the study. Having more white matter hyperintensities can slow the brain’s ability to process information, pay attention and remember, experts say. Lower levels of white matter have also been connected to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and irritability. “Their findings are consistent with the literature that indicates sleep, including slow-wave sleep, plays an important role in maintaining brain health,” said sleep specialist Kristen Knutson,PhD an associate professor of neurology and preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “We have also seen associations between poor sleep quality and higher blood pressure, and high blood pressure can lead to brain lesions or stroke,” said Knutson, who was not involved in the new research.
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WGN
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Updated recommendations for breast cancer screenings can help with earlier detection
A radical change in advice about screening women for breast cancer was announced Tuesday. Get screened earlier. It will save lives. For Black women it’s even more important. After years of telling women to wait until 50 for their first mammogram, the nation’s top doctors are urging women to back that up by a decade. Dr. Sarah Friedewald is chief of breast imaging at Northwestern Medicine and associate professor of radiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “One in six breast cancers occur in women in their 40s,” she said. “If we are screening these patients, we will find a cancer, smaller and more easily treatable.” Friedewald said that’s the goal: find cancer early when it is most treatable. “Information is power,” she said. “Come, get your mammogram, find out if there’s anything wrong. And if there is, it’s something we can address and potentially save lives.”
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Is your job ruining your sleep? If so, this may be why
Sleeping poorly due to job stress? That may be due to a lack of support from coworkers and higher-ups, a new study found. However, receiving improved psychological and social support at your job allows you to more easily shut off from the workday, thus giving you precious downtime to de-stress and improve sleep, according to the study. “This study highlights the important role that workplace environment and stress have beyond the setting of work on overall well-being,” said Dr. Phyllis Zee, chief of sleep medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Zee was not involved in the study. “Initiatives to improve well-being in the workplace can improve sleep, but at a personal level, what we can optimize is our sleep quality — which in turn can help to handle stress and ultimately increase resilience to daily challenges we face,” Zee said.
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TIME
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The Most Effective Way to Get Through to Parents Who Won’t Vaccinate Their Kids
As doctors and public health officials keep trying to persuade parents to get their kids vaccinated against childhood diseases, the entreaties don’t always do much. Part of the problem is the vocal anti-vaccine movement in the U.S. and a lack of access to adequate healthcare services. But another issue might be that the most effective pro-vaccine communicators aren’t being used. However, a recent study found that parents may feel inclined to get their child vaccinated if they heard from a trusted parent that they had vaccinated their own children. “This study tells us that parents really value what they hear from other parents who they trust when it comes to decisions about vaccinating their children,” says Marie Heffernan, PhD, lead author of the paper and assistant professor in the department of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “The current study was in the context of the COVID-19 vaccine for children, but we can think about this in terms of other routine childhood vaccinations as well.”
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CBS News
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Clinical trial has promising results to fight brain cancer
There’s potential new hope for people with a deadly kind of brain cancer. Until now treatments for glioblastoma have been limited. But now scientists at Northwestern Medicine say they’ve developed a new technique that can deliver drugs directly to tumors in the brain. Dr. Adam Sonabend, associate professor of neurological surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, says “This is very important as most drugs don’t really penetrate the brain given this structure called the blood-brain barrier.” The team says the novel device uses microbubbles to open the blood-brain barrier allowing two powerful chemotherapy drugs, injected intravenously, to reach critical areas of the brain. “We were able to increase the drug levels in the brain anywhere between 3.7 to 5.9 times,” Sonabend said. Scientists at Northwestern say the next step is to determine whether their treatment actually helps people live longer.
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USA Today
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What causes myocarditis in boys and young men after COVID vaccination? Study offers answers.
A new study may partly explain what’s driving rare cases of heart inflammation, called myocarditis, in some young people who have gotten repeat doses of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. While severe cases of myocarditis can damage the heart and cause of heart failure, cases of COVID vaccine-related myocarditis have typically been mild in nature, said Dr. Donald Lloyd-Jones, former president of the American Heart Association and Eileen M. Foell professor of heart research at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “While we can see over time some scar tissue form in the heart, we can see that people can get back to doing what they do, like getting back to sports” within a month, he said.
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New York Times
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Why Do Some People Develop Allergies in Adulthood?
Allergies come in many different forms, and generally develop when your immune system mistakenly treats a harmless allergen, like pollen or animal dander, as a threat. It then reacts every time it encounters that allergen, with symptoms that can vary widely, ranging from coughing, sneezing and itchiness and more serious reactions like hives, vomiting, trouble breathing and loss of consciousness. Experts don’t know how common it is for different kinds of allergies to develop in adulthood, said Dr. Ruchi Gupta, a professor of pediatrics who specializes in allergy at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Though we do have some data as it relates to food allergies. In one survey of more than 40,000 adults in the United States published in 2018, for instance, Dr. Gupta and her colleagues found that about 45 percent of those who had food allergies developed at least one new food allergy in adulthood. Of this group, a quarter never experienced food allergies as children.
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WGN
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New tech helps chemo target hard-to-reach brain tumors
There is new hope for patients with the deadliest form of brain cancer. It’s a breakthrough and that’s exactly what this latest technology does – it breaks through the brain’s natural shield so the most powerful chemotherapy drugs can finally reach a tumor. Dr. Adam Sonabend is a neurosurgeon at Northwestern Medicine and associate professor of neurological surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. It’s been the greatest challenge for doctors like Sonabend and Roger Stupp, who treat patients with glioblastoma, an aggressive and lethal brain cancer. “Most drugs that we can use for treating cancer do not reach into these tumor cells that are hidden in the brain,” Sonabend said. “That’s because of this structure called the blood brain barrier.” Using an implantable device, equipped with nine ultrasound emmitters, the Northwestern Medicine team is able to deliver the most potent chemotherapy drugs across the barrier.
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TODAY
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Is a low-carb diet or low-fat diet better for longer life?
Consuming a low-fat diet full of healthy foods during the middle age may lengthen your life, a new study suggests. In contrast, a healthy low-carbohydrate eating pattern did not lead to much of an improvement in longevity, according to the analysis of dietary data from more than 370,000 middle-aged and older adults published in the Journal of Internal Medicine. But there are limitations to these findings, despite the strong data analysis, Linda Van Horn, PhD, chief of nutrition at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who wasn’t involved in the research. She points out that the data used is 20 years old and from when “people had a very different understanding of diet and nutrition.” She also believes the results are lacking important context around participants’ overall health. “My major concern is that nowhere do they talk about obesity or what condition these people were in,” Van Horn says. “We don’t know what their physical activity level was. We don’t know what their BMI was.”
