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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Chicago Tribune
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Researcher says improved public transportation routes, mobile clinics could increase health care accesss
A mother/daughter duo must take public transportation to medical appointments and it is extremely unpredictable. Lindsay Allen, assistant professor of emergency medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, researches access to healthcare for Medicaid recipients, who are typically marginalized members of society. Within that research, Allen said she focuses on how patients decide where to seek care for nonemergency care and substance use disorder care. Research has found a lack of transportation results in delayed or missed healthcare appointments, poorer health outcomes and increase in healthcare expenses, Allen said. “Just because it exists doesn’t mean it’s actually useful,” Allen said. “Not having access to transportation does worsen people’s health and increase healthcare cost.” A lack of transportation also results in people calling for an ambulance and going to the emergency room for non-emergency care. Wealthy people who have health insurance and a car have the best access to healthcare because they have a large option of healthcare providers to choose from and they can drive to their appointments, Allen said. “The thing that people are not considering is that it’s not just about the getting to the appointment. It’s everything that you have to give up in order to spend an hour and a half one way to get to that clinic,” Allen said. Three hours of travel means additional money spend on child or elder care, three hours of time off from work and three hours exposed to potential safety risks, like routes through dangerous neighborhoods.
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TODAY
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Drinking 2 or more sugary drinks a day may raise the risks of dying from cancer, study finds
Consuming two or more servings of sugary drinks a day may raise the risk of dying from an obesity-related cancer, a new study finds. An analysis of data from nearly 1 million Americans who were followed for almost 30 years reveals that people who consumed sugary beverages had a 5% increase in the risk of dying from an obesity-related cancer when compared to people who consumed no sugary drinks. The diet of Americans has changed a lot since the beginning of CPS-II (Cancer Prevention Study II), said Linda Van Horn, a professor of preventive medicine and chief of the nutrition division at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “I think frankly, the most important thing identified here, which has been pointed out before, is the adverse relationship between any type of cancer and the development of obesity,” Van Horn said. “Keep in mind, the vast majority of us are overweight or obese.”
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WebMD
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Celebrity Actors Film Their Colonoscopies to Bring Awareness
Gastroenterologists are applauding Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney for using their celebrity to show how colonscopy can be both easy and lifesaving. An important take-home message is that colonoscopy is really the best test for screening. The premise of screening is to detect any potential issues before they cause cancer. Rajesh N. Keswani, MD, agrees about the importance of the campaign. “Overall, the message was incredibly effective. Everyone involved from the celebrities to the clinicians did a great job ensuring that all the important points were touched upon.” Further, “Beyond saying that colonoscopy is easy, they prove it by showing the patients laughing and eating after the procedure,” says Keswani, associate professor of gastroenterology and hepatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. There is a large amount of data showing that similar campaigns can improve colon cancer screening rates, most notably when Katie Couric, who lost her husband, televised her colonoscopy to effectively promote colon cancer screening.
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Fox 32 Chicago
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New eczema treatment approved for younger patients
We’ve all had annoying mosquito bites that can drive us crazy, but imagine having to deal with that itchy sensation all the time. That is what it’s like for millions of Americans who deal with eczema. There are medications to treat it, but until recently, children from six months to age five who weren’t responding to those medications, didn’t have many other options – until now. The new medicine is called Dupixent. For children whose eczema is not being controlled, it’s being called a game changer. “These kids are just miserable. They’re itching all the time,” said Dr. Amy Paller, professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “These kids are just miserable. They’re itching all the time,” said Dr. Paller. “It affects mood, it affects your ability to be awake and function well in school. It also affects your relationships because this is a highly visible skin problem, so everyone can see it right in front of them.” Dr. Paller says one of the other huge benefits of Dupixent is that it has an incredible safety profile.
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TODAY
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Will King Charles rule for a long time? what we know about his health
With the death of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, all eyes are on King Charles III, who becomes monarch at age 73 – an age when most people are already years into their retirement. Questions have risen about King Charles III’s swollen hands. There’s no official word of his diagnosis, if any, but in general, doctors said this symptom can be due to a variety of issues. Heart, liver and kidney are common causes of swelling, but it usually involves the whole body, said Dr. Jeffrey Linder, chief of internal medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “The feet and ankles are usually affected first and swelling generally has to be pretty advanced to involve the hands,” Linder told TODAY. Fluid retention can also cause swelling in the hands and ankles, which can be more marked in older adults who’ve been inactive or sitting, he added.
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TODAY
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Walking this number of steps every day can reduce dementia risk by 50%
Walking 10,000 steps a day can cut the risk of dementia in half, and for those who can’t walk so far, just 4,000 daily steps can reduce dementia risk by a quarter, a new study finds. In recent years, there has been “an important trend to focus on modifiable risk factors for dementia that we can adjust in our own lives that may be important for living long and well,” said Emily Rogalski, PhD, associate director of the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “We’ve also seen how exercise interventions and lifestyle changes can modify the risk for dementia,” said Rogalski. “I think this research offers an important opportunity to explore how the number of steps and their intensity may play a role in the risk for dementia and in the health of our brains.” The new study drills further down to look at the optimal number of steps and the intensity of those steps, Rogalski said. It’s unlikely that walking will turn out to be the only exercise that impacts the risk of dementia, she added. “With interventions like exercise and cognitive stimulation, it’s unlikely that there will be a one size fits all strategy,” Rogalski said. What’s important on an individual level is melding the science with what fits for an individual, she added.
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Crain’s Chicago Business
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Maternal Stress During Pregnancy Leads to Sad Babies, Study
Pregnant people who had bigger fluctuations in stress from one moment to the next – also called lability – had infants with more fear, sadness and distress at three months old than mothers with less stress variability, according to a Northwestern University study. Prior research has found that mothers’ distress during pregnancy has been related to infant temperament and behavior, but this is one of the first studies to measure mothers’ experience of stress in real time on many occasions, which enables a closer look at whether changes in mothers’ stress across pregnancy matter for infant development, Northwestern said in a statement. “Research often examines stress as a static, unchanging construct – one that is either high or low, present or absent – but most of us have a lot of ebbs and flows in our stress depending on what is going on around us,” lead study author Leigha MacNeill, researcher professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a member of the Northwestern Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences said in the statement.
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Associated Press
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Candy, Cash, Gifts: How Rewards Help Recovery From Addiction
For an increasing number of Americans, addiction treatment involves not only hard work, but also earning rewards – sometimes totaling $500 – for negative drug tests or showing up for counseling or group meetings. There’s brain science behind the method, which is known as contingency management. And barriers to wider adoption of reward programs, such as government concerns about fraud, are starting to crumble. Medication can help people quit abusing opioids, but stimulant addiction has no effective medicine. Rewards programs – especially when the dollar value increases with consistent performance – are widely recognized as the most effective treatment for people addicted to stimulants. The method is grounded in brain science. Psychologists have known for years that people who prefer small, immediate rewards over larger, delayed ones are vulnerable to addiction. “Biologically, the use of substances lights up the same part of the brain that is lit up when a person wins the lottery, falls in love or experiences something really positive and exciting,” said psychologist Sara Becker of Northwestern University. The same pathway is lit up if someone wins a reward. “That’s part of what’s powerful about these programs,” Becker said.
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TODAY
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Epilepsy strikes woman, 20, out of the blue in rare symptom
Grace Hinchman was a healthy 20-year-old college athlete when she suddenly developed epilepsy – an ordeal that made it difficult for her to talk, walk or know where she was. Doctors called her case one in a million 0 or even more unique – for contracting and then completely recovering from a rare but catastrophic sudden epilepsy syndrome. It can strike children and young adults after they develop a fever from the flu or another benign infection. Fewer than 20% of patients who have this condition, known as FIRES (the acronym for febrile infection-related epilepsy syndrome) make a full cognitive recovery, said Dr. Ayush Batra a neurointensivist at Northwestern Medicine who helped treat Hinchman and an assistant professor of neurocritical care and pathology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “What’s so disturbing about it is there can be no known prior medical history, nothing developmentally abnormal,” Batra said. “So you couldn’t think of a more devastating situation where you have these young healthy children (and young adults) and out of nowhere, out of the blue, with no known predilection, they develop this syndrome.” Doctors don’t know exactly why it happens, but it’s believed a low-grade infection that leads to a fever somehow triggers abnormal inflammation, Batra said. Hinchman has made a full neurologic recovery by all metrics and measures, “an incredibly rare case,” Batra said. She’s back in college, playing volleyball again and feeling just like she did before the ordeal.
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US News & World Report
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Music: Bridging Memories for People with Alzheimer’s
The program, Musical Bridges to Memory, has been shown to enhance patients’ ability to non-verbally interact with their caregivers, according to a study published recently in the journal Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders. The music therapy also reduces troubling dementia symptoms like agitation, anxiety and depression. In the program, a live ensemble plays music from a patient’s youth. The patient and their caregiver are encouraged to interact with the music together by singing, dancing or playing simple instruments like shakers, drums or tambourines. It’s well-established that even as dementia wreaks havoc on the mind and memories, the degenerative brain disorder doesn’t appear to affect a person’s ability to enjoy music until much later in the disease course, said senior researcher Dr. Borna Bonakdarpour. He is an associate professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Because of this, patients can retain their ability to dance and sing long after their ability to talk has diminished. “They can process music, they can get it, they receive it, they respond to it, they can dance with it, they can play with it, they can sing along with it,” Bonakdarpour said. “These are components that are pretty much intact, which is amazing.” The Alzheimer’s Association recognizes music therapy as an important non-drug therapy for dementia.
