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UICScience has moved!

You may have noticed that we haven’t posted here in a while. That’s because we’ve moved the UIC science blog and renamed it Science Sparks. We’re now going to officially retire this Tumblr account.

Please visit Science Sparks to read about the exciting science and research happening at the University of Illinois Chicago. You can also get the latest from our X/Twitter feed, UICscience.

Chicago Biomedical Consortium names UIC grad among incoming fellows

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The Chicago Biomedical Consortium (CBC) has announced its 2023 class of the CBC Entrepreneurial Fellows, which includes a graduate from the University of Illinois Chicago’s College of Pharmacy.

The Entrepreneurial Fellows program provides mentorship to bio-entrepreneurial minded junior researchers who will gain real-world experience by helping Chicago’s university researchers, including those at UIC, develop academic science into biomedical applications.

The fellows were recruited through a nationwide search of graduating PhD scientists. Incoming fellow Ahmed Disouky earned his PhD from UIC, where he studied the extent of hippocampal neurogenesis in Alzheimer’s disease patients and its impact on their learning and memory. He will join three other fellows as part of this second cohort in the program.

The CBC’s mission is to stimulate collaboration among scientists at UIC, Northwestern University, The University of Chicago, and other area institutions to accelerate discovery and expand the life sciences ecosystem here.

The Entrepreneurial Fellows receive a full-time, paid, two-year position that offers them professional and career development, as well as a curriculum in early-stage drug development and the business of biotech. They will work with a network of industry mentors including venture capitalists, biotech executives, Chicago-area entrepreneurs, member institution tech transfer offices, and senior advisors.

This network, combined with guidance from CBC staff, helps the fellows evaluate technologies sourced from commercially promising research projects from the three CBC member universities. The best of these projects will receive up to $250,000 in funding through the CBC Accelerator Award to advance the science.

“UIC is committed to helping our scientists translate their ideas into medicines through our Proof of Concept Awards. The CBC has been a wonderful collaborator by partnering their Environmental Fellows with our faculty to provide guidance, strategic feedback and follow-on funding after the POC awards,” said Joanna Groden, vice chancellor for research at UIC.

The other three fellows are Owen Shelton, a neuroscientist who has studied how the nervous system generates movement; Sonal Rangnekar, a nanomaterials researcher; and Rachel Wallace, an immunoengineer whose expertise lies at the intersection of immunology, materials science and nanotechnology.

A guide to treating premenstrual dysphoric disorder

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Roughly 5% of people who menstruate are affected by premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a cyclical, hormone-trigged mood disorder which can cause symptoms like irritability, anxiety and depression. And about a quarter of those with PMDD do not respond to standard treatments.

Yet, an effective treatment for treatment-resistant PMDD is often not offered to patients because providers do not have all the information they need, according to a new paper from UIC researchers. The researchers therefore wrote a primer for practitioners on treatment-resistant PMDD with a guide to the treatment, called gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogs with stable hormone addback. The paper was recently published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

It is critical that practitioners, including psychiatrists, be familiar with PMDD and how to treat it because, the authors write, those with PMDD are at increased risk for suicide. The article walks through how to diagnose PMDD, the first line of treatment, and then how to assess the use of gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogs with stable hormone addback if the standard treatments are not effective.

“Despite the fact that PMDD represents a psychiatric condition characterized by a neurobiological sensitivity to hormone changes, most psychiatrists—even reproductive psychiatrists—do not currently offer [this] treatment for severe, treatment-resistant PMDD,” the authors write.

The research was conducted by the College of Medicine’s Melissa Wagner-Schuman, Jordan Barone, Jaclyn Ross, Ashley Mulvihill, and Tory Eisenlohr-Moul, along with Alyssa Kania, a graduate of the College of Medicine.

Online harassment of physicians and scientists soared during the pandemic

A cartoon image of a woman sitting with her head on her knees next to a giant hone filled with negative emojis. Adobe stock image.ALT

As COVID-19 spread around the world in 2020 and 2021, it was accompanied by waves of online misinformation about the virus, its dangers and the public health efforts to prevent infection. Many medical and scientific professionals attempted to fight back online by providing evidence-backed information on social media. 

But a new survey detailed in JAMA Network Open describes the blowback of those efforts. UIC oncologist Shikha Jain and researchers from Northwestern, University of Chicago and University of California, San Francisco found that 66% of physicians, biomedical scientists and trainees experienced social media harassment, a dramatic increase from the 23% of physicians who reported harassment in a study conducted before the pandemic by the same team. 

COVID-19 was confirmed as the main flashpoint – 64% of total survey respondents said they received harassment over their comments on the pandemic, and 88% of those who reported harassment said it was in response to advocacy. But the physicians and scientists also experienced harassment based on gender, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation or disability. 18% of respondents said their private information had been shared – a practice known as “doxxing.”

As a result of these experiences, 64% of the 359 survey respondents said they had changed the way they use social media. 

“At a time when physicians and biomedical scientists need support and their advocacy is vital to the national interest more than ever before, they are being badgered, doxxed, and sexually harassed,” the authors conclude. “Institutions and companies should support those who are attacked and provide mechanisms to reduce harassment and provide accountability.”

Virtual doctor visits earn mostly positive reviews from patients

A male patient talking on a conference video call to a female doctor. Adobe stock photo.ALT

One of the many technological adaptations during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic was a shift to telehealth – virtual doctor appointments conducted over a computer or phone. According to one report, telehealth visits increased over 8,000% in the first few months of the national shutdown, and they remained elevated even after doctor’s offices and hospitals returned to normal activity.

But do patients get what they need from these virtual experiences? To answer this question, a team of researchers from UIC Business, led by Ranganathan Chandrasekaran, scraped more than 5,000 reviews from the medical booking site Zocdoc. They then used data science techniques to analyze the text of those reviews for sentiment and common themes of praise or complaints.

Overall, the feedback on video visits was favorable: almost 90% of the reviews reflected positive sentiment. And the objections to the online format appeared to decrease over the time period that the researchers examined, which ran from April 2020 to March 2022. 

Patient reviews most often mentioned communication and medical expertise as important factors for how they judged their virtual visit. “Patients favored those physicians who listened to their concerns, answered questions and provided clear and easily understandable information,” the authors wrote. They propose a new concept of “webside manner,” behaviors that medical providers should follow to “make patients comfortable in virtual settings.”

On the negative side, patients pointed out issues with long wait times, technical issues, and difficulty with follow-up information and appointments. The authors also could not use the current dataset to test whether patients preferred video visits to the in-person variety, they said. 

The research article appeared in the open-source Cell Press journal Heliyon in early June. Additional UIC co-authors were Prathamesh Bapat and Pruthivinath Jeripity Venkata.

Junk foods dominate grocery checkout aisles, study finds

Rows of candy bars in a supermarket checkout lane. Adobe stock photo.ALT

As anyone grocery shopping with a child has probably noticed, the checkout aisles of grocery stores are often filled with candy, chips, soda and other sweet or salty temptations. A new study by researchers at UIC, University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, Davis quantifies this impulse sales trick, finding that 7 out of 10 items in checkout lanes are unhealthy.

The research, published in Current Developments in Nutrition, observed over 100 stores in four California cities. The most commonly-found categories in the checkout lanes were candy (38%), gum (18%), sugary beverages such as soda (11%) and salty snacks (9%). Healthy options such as water, fruits and vegetables or nuts appeared only rarely as last-minute purchase options.

Researchers also found that more healthy foods and drinks were found in the checkout lanes of specialty food stores and large chains, while unhealthy treats predominated in dollar stores and independent grocery stores – the types often found in disadvantaged “food desert” neighborhoods.

“There’s an opportunity here for checkouts to offer more choice by expanding access to healthier options,” said lead author Jennifer Falbe in a UC Davis news release. “Currently, consumers lack choices at the checkout.”

The study’s co-authors included Samantha Marinello, Andrea Pipito, Rebecca Schermbeck and Lisa Powell from UIC. Powell, distinguished professor and director of the Division of Health Policy and Administration in the School of Public Health, researches the effects of public policy on behavioral outcomes. 

Read more about Powell’s research at UIC today.

Researcher discusses how home appraisals contribute to Chicago’s racial wealth gap

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UIC sociologist Junia Howell was on WGN discussing her research into the large difference in home appraisals in white vs. non-white neighborhoods.

Howell and her fellow researchers found that the median home value in 2022 in Chicago for a home in a majority-minority neighborhood was about $219,000, while it was about $608,160 in a majority-white neighborhood.

But those numbers are “even more drastic” than they seem, Howell explained, because the researchers have been able to eliminate factors like home quality, crime and schools, and isolate just the difference due to the racial composition of the community.

“This problem is at the cornerstone of racial wealth gaps,” Howell, a visiting professor,  told WGN.

Howell said she and others are working on creating new appraisal formulas that will chip away at this disparity. She’s hoping to have something to make public in the next few months, she said.

To hear more about her research, you can watch the full WGN Evening News segment.

No, breathing wildfire smoke is not like smoking cigarettes.

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Wildfires in Canada have blanketed much of the country in smoke that can be harmful to people’s health. So it’s not a huge surprise that people are trying to quantify the health risks by comparing wildfire smoke to smoking cigarettes.

But a number of experts, including Susan Buchanan, a clinical associate professor in the School of Public Health at UIC, said this is a faulty comparison, which may actually downplay the dangers of breathing in wildfire smoke. Buchanan and others were quoted in an article in the Democrat & Chronicle newspaper out of Rochester, N.Y.

Buchanan stressed that there have been no lab experiments comparing cigarettes and wildfire smoke, so there’s no basis for saying that standing outside in the smoke equates to smoking a certain number of cigarettes.

But the lack of scientific comparisons does not mean that the wildfire smoke should be taken lightly, she told the newspaper.

“That means that some people with heart disease and lung problems are going to have increased symptoms,” she told the Democrat & Chronicle. “They should stay inside in air-conditioning” preferably with a Minimum Efficiency Reporting Values, or MERV, 13 filtration or higher.

You can learn more, including how a more accurate comparison may be between wildfire smoke and living with a chain smoker, by reading the full article.

Photo by Ahmer Kalam on Unsplash.

New book explores the origins of American “gun culture”

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In her forthcoming book, Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture, UIC’s Alexandra Filindra traces gun culture’s roots back to the American Revolution. However, the origin was not in libertarian ideals but instead was tied to the belief in white male supremacy.

The book, which comes out in September, recently received a starred review from Kirkus.

“This is a deeply informed, persuasive book, offering a compelling overview of how Americans became militarized and how that militarization is increasing,” the review says.

Filindra, an associate professor of political science and psychology, has conducted research into American gun politics, race and ethnic politics, and political psychology.

You can read the full Kirkus review here and learn more about the book here.

Photo by Jay Rembert on Unsplash.

UIC experts weigh in on CPS school closings, which happened 10 years ago

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It’s been 10 years since then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel made the highly controversial decision to close 50 Chicago Public Schools because of dwindling enrollment.

WBEZ and the Sun-Times teamed up on a deep dive into the legacy of those closures, with faculty from the University of Illinois Chicago weighing in. The upshot of the reporting is that, a decade later, there is little evidence that the closings helped students or the “welcoming” schools they were sent to.

For example, many of these welcoming schools find themselves in the same position as closed schools did 10 years ago, with low enrollment contributing to significant budget constraints. David Stovall, a professor of black studies at UIC, told the reporting team that this is partly because these schools are near the closed schools, so are impacted by many of the same factors.

“In those places where schools have been closed, there’s a lack of access to affordable housing, lack of access to long-term living wage employment,” he is quoted as saying. “Those are the spaces that have the highest levels of recorded violence. So we don’t have those things and people decide to move elsewhere — [that’s] the result.”

This ongoing population loss is contributing to the further reduction in students, the reporting explains. And while school closings may not be the main reason people moved, they send a message to these neighborhoods, explained Amanda Lewis, director of UIC’s Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy.

“Schools, in many ways, are representative of a general public commitment to a community and to the longevity and health of a community, to its vitality, to its future,” she is quoted as saying. “They are clearly anchor institutions in a lot of ways.”

You can read more of the WBEZ and Sun-Times reporting here.

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash.