Breakthroughs

Esophageal diseases are extremely common, and symptoms such as trouble swallowing, chest pain, regurgitation and choking diminish quality of life. There can also be psychosocial effects for patients with these diseases that includes hypervigilance — a heightened focus on physical symptoms — and symptom-specific anxiety such as fear of choking. Identifying patients with issues could help providers better treat their disease. That's according to a new Northwestern Medicine study published in the journal Gastroenterology.

A recent survey of more than 32,000 caregivers of Chicago Public School students found that around a quarter children and adolescents were described as stressed, anxious, angry or agitated in the months after remote learning began. Black and Latinx participants experienced significantly more of these stressors. Dr. Tali Raviv, associate professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Feinberg explains the results and offers insight.

Dean Eric G. Neilson, MD, and Robert Murphy, MD, talk about COVID-19 vaccine safety and effectiveness. This conversation was recorded May 7, 2021.

Recently, the director of the CDC officially recommended that pregnant women receive the vaccines for COVID-19. However, pregnant women are less likely than non-pregnant women to get vaccinated and are at greater risk of hospitalization and death from the disease. Emily Miller, MD, MPH, has been caring for pregnant patients at Prentice Women's Hospital since the onset of the pandemic. She shares results from a new study on the benefit of maternal vaccination and speaks to the history of excluding pregnant women from clinical trials.

COVID-19 can be a multi-system disease, impacting many organs and the entire nervous system. Igor Koralnik, MD, has been investigating the neurologic symptoms of the disease and published the first study focused on long-term neurological symptoms in COVID-19 "long haulers." He explains the study and what he is seeing in the Neuro COVID-19 Clinic at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Daniel Batlle, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Nephrology-Hypertension at Northwestern, proposed a hypothesis that soluble ACE2 could treat the SARS-CoV-2 virus and lead to full recovery and survival. Now, he has exciting preliminary results to share.

Black men are more likely to get prostate cancer and more than twice as likely to die from the disease than other men. Dr. Edward Schaeffer has developed a research team to better understand this problem. In this show he talks about his latest discoveries, which are paving the way to precision medicine for aggressive prostate cancer. Dr. Schaeffer is the Chair of the Department of Urology at Northwestern and a Northwestern Medicine urologist with a specialized practice in prostate cancer.

An early clinical trial in individuals with the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma showed an experimental spherical nucleic acid drug developed by Northwestern University scientists was able to penetrate the blood-brain barrier and trigger the death of tumor cells. Lead investigator Priya Kumthekar, MD, explains the results of the study.