University of Illinois, Chicago: News

[Editor's note: Photos may be downloaded at http://newsphoto.lib.uic.edu/main.php/uic_theatre/.]

WHAT:
The University of Illinois at Chicago Theatre presents "Stars in the Morning Sky," Alexander Galin's retelling of Maxim Gorky's "The Lower Depths," directed by Luda Lopatina Solomon, freelance director and adjunct instructor in Russian classic theater at UIC.

WHEN:
Nov. 13, 14, 19, 20 and 21 at 7:30 p.m.; Nov. 15, 18 and 22 at 2:15 p.m.

WHERE:
UIC Theatre
1044 W. Harrison St.

DETAILS:
This often funny retelling of Maxim Gorky's "The Lower Depths" was adapted by Yasen Peyankov, head of UIC's acting program, and Peter Christensen. It takes place on the eve of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, when police herded prostitutes to the city's outskirts. Four of the women are left in a dilapidated barracks that once served as a mental hospital. Under the control of a jailer, a police officer and a brutal fifth prostitute, they tell stories of the family betrayals and class divisions that derailed their lives.

Luda Lopatina Solomon was nominated for Jeff Awards for directing Chicago's European Repertory Company in Anton Chekhov's "Ivanov" and Nikolay Kolyada's "Go Away, Go Away." With Yasen Peyankov, she also directed the company in "Stars in the Morning Sky." Solomon studied at the Leningrad Institute of Music, Theatre and Film, earned a doctoral degree at the St. Petersburg State Academy of Dramatic Arts, and acted at Leningrad Studio Theatre. She has taught at UIC and The School at Steppenwolf.

Tickets for all shows are $11-16. For information, call (312) 996-2939.

WHO/WHAT:

Walter Payton's family will be joined by "Da Bears" Superfan George Wendt and members of the Walter Payton Center Guild at a fund-raising gala to support gastrointestinal, liver disease, and transplantation programs at the University of Illinois Medical Center's Walter Payton Liver Center and the UIC College of Medicine.

Former Chicago Bears players Steve McMichael, Jim Thornton, and Revie Sorey will also attend the gala.

This year's theme, "Kickoff for the Cure: Saluting the Legacy of Walter Payton," commemorates the 10-year anniversary of the death of the beloved Chicago sports icon and heralds the formal announcement of the guild's plan to directly address the deadly disease of liver cancer.

In 1999, Walter Payton was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis, a rare liver disease which led to his demise from liver cancer.

The incidence of liver cancer is expected to double in the U.S. over the next 10 to 20 years. This year alone 17,000 Americans will die of liver cancer and 26,000 will die of cirrhosis of the liver. While 17,000 people are waiting for a liver transplant, nearly 2,000 will die while waiting for a donor.

This year the Guild has focused on a specific goal, in collaboration with UIC basic scientists, gastroenterologists, hepatologists, immunologists and surgeons, to cure liver cancer by 2020.

At the gala guests will enjoy music and dancing courtesy of City Lights Orchestra. Silent and live auctions will include donations, gift and travel packages. Last year, more than 650 Chicagoans attended the event.

In 1997, a group of concerned Chicago-area residents came together to improve the lives of family members, friends, neighbors and colleagues who were affected by gastrointestinal diseases such as hepatitis, liver cancer, fatty liver disease, colon cancer and peptic ulcer disease. The volunteers have worked since then to increase awareness of these diseases and raise funds to assist the work of UIC physicians and researchers. In 2009, the group of volunteers partnered with the Payton Estate to become the Walter Payton Center Guild.

Mike Adamle, NBC-5 Chicago sports anchor, will emcee the event. Don Yaeger, co-author of "Never Die Easy: The Autobiography of Walter Payton," will be the featured guest speaker.

For information about the Walter Payton Center Guild Gala, email laurenw@uic.edu or call (312) 996-0141.

WHEN/WHERE:

Saturday, Nov. 7
The United Club at Soldier Field
1410 S. Museum Campus Drive

5:30 p.m. Event begins, interview and photo opportunities
7:45 p.m. Brittney Payton announces 2020 goal to cure liver cancer, speaks about her father
8:00 p.m. Don Yaeger honors Walter Payton

INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITIES:

- Walter Payton's family -- Connie, Brittney and Jarrett Payton
- Kent Hammerstrom, guild president and group vice president, Bank of America
- Dr. Thomas Layden, guild director and head of medicine at UIC

Restricting daily calorie intake is a common plan to help obese and overweight people slim down to healthier weights. But the regime requires a daily 15 to 40 percent calorie reduction, which makes sticking to the diet hard for many.

University of Illinois at Chicago researchers have found that a modified version of a plan called "alternate-day fasting" may be easier to abide and has the added bonus of improving cardio health. The findings appear in the November 1 issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

"This diet has been around about 20 years, but its effect on weight loss hadn't really been studied," said Krista Varady, assistant professor of kinesiology and nutrition, who led the UIC research team.

The 10-week trial studied 16 clinically obese people -- 12 women and four men -- between the ages of 35 and 65 who all weighed more than 210 pounds, had kept their weight stable for the previous three months, and had body mass indexes of between 30 and 39.9. None was diabetic, had a history of cardiovascular disease, was taking weight-loss or lipid- or glucose-lowering medications, or smoked.

The study was divided into three phases:

The first two weeks, participants ate and exercised normally.

Between weeks three and six, participants ate normal meals one day, then would fast the next. On fast days, participants ate the equivalent of a three-course lunch, prepared at UIC's Human Nutritional Research Center, that provided between 20 and 25 percent of daily energy needs.

For the final four weeks, participants were counseled by dietitians on menu options, but essentially chose on their own what to eat, based on what they had learned about meal sizes and food choices.

"We wanted to see if they could actually do it by themselves -- because what's the point of studying this diet if you have to feed people meals prepared at metabolic kitchens all the time?" said Varady.

Weight loss ranged from 10 to 30 pounds; the researchers expected an average loss of only five pounds. Blood pressure and heart rate were also lowered, along with total cholesterol and circulating fat levels.

Varady hopes now to study the effects of staying on the diet for at least six months, looking for evidence of self-motivation and to see if the diet helps in maintaining proper weight.

"Why are some able to do it but others not? It takes about two weeks to adjust to the diet, after which people don't feel hungry on the fast day," she said.

"We need to find out how long they can stay on this diet -- and if they go off it, do they automatically regain the weight?"

Co-authors on the study are doctoral students Surabhi Bhutani and Monica Klempel, and Emily Church, clinical coordinator in physical therapy at UIC. The study was supported by UIC departmental funding.

A podcast on this subject is available here.

For more information about UIC, visit www.uic.edu

Cardiologists at the University of Illinois Medical Center are using a new heart pump that can be inserted without the need for surgery and allows them to treat high-risk patients with a procedure to unblock their heart arteries.

The recently FDA-approved device was used to assist in three angioplasty procedures at the Medical Center last week.

Patients with the worst blockages are often the sickest, making it too dangerous to treat their coronary artery blockages with standard angioplasty or even with a bypass operation, says Dr. Adhir Shroff, assistant professor of cardiology at the UIC College of Medicine.

Shroff and his partners, Dr. Mladen Vidovich, assistant professor of cardiology, and Dr. John Kao, assistant professor of medicine, performed these procedures using the Abiomed Impella 2.5 ventricular assist device, which has been used only about 1,000 times in the country.

"Often these patients, who may have complicating conditions like cancer, renal failure, severe lung disease, or heart failure, are poor candidates for more invasive procedures like bypass surgery and are left with few options," said Shroff. "We only proceed with high-risk angioplasties after reviewing the patients with our heart surgeons."

Angioplasty is done by threading a thin, flexible tube, or catheter, into the coronary arteries through a small opening in a leg artery. It is much less invasive than open heart surgery, but has been largely restricted to managing low- to middle-risk patients.

The Impella heart pump makes it possible for cardiologists to offer the less invasive procedure to high-risk patients. "Our ability to continuously maintain blood flow will decrease complications during these high-risk cases where the patient had no other options to fix their heart arteries," Shroff said.

The Impella system uses a narrow catheter, which is threaded up from the groin, through the ascending aorta, and into the left ventricle. From this position, the Impella pumps blood from within the heart into the aorta, supplementing the weakened pumping of the patient's heart. The pump itself is smaller than a number-2 pencil eraser. Although it provides a large portion of the heart's work, it is silent and virtually imperceptible to the patient.

The Impella can be regulated during angioplasty to maintain blood flow, giving the physician the time needed to remove the blockage. If the patient needs further support, the Impella can be continued while the patient moves up to the ICU and until the heart is able to take on the task.

"We have created a seamless transition from the cath lab to the ICU," Shroff said. "We could not have done this without the collaboration of everyone who sees these patients as they move through the hospital, from the emergency room to the cath lab to the ICU. This exceptional effort on everyone's part, especially Nursing Services and the Cath Lab staff, allows UIC to offer the best possible care for patients with heart disease."

[Editor's note: An animation of the Impella at work is available on request.]

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have received $1 million from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to study the relationship between "fat taxes" and food consumption, diet quality and obesity.

The funding for the two-year project was made available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The study will link state tax rates associated with restaurants and with specific sugar- and fat-laden foods and beverages (soda, candy, baked goods and chips) to individual survey data.

Using multiple data sets from a 10-year period -- 1997 through 2007 -- the researchers will determine if differential tax rates equate to differences in consumption, diet quality and body mass index, or BMI, for children, adolescents and adults.

The study will separately examine these relationships among low-income food stamp recipients and non-food stamp recipients.

Previous economic studies suggest that food prices do change consumption. However, the researchers want to determine if, for example, consumers will seek out another high-sugar drink such as Kool-Aid if, say, soda is too expensive. If they do, then a tax on soda may reduce soda consumption but will not necessarily reduce weight, improve diet quality, or reduce overall sugar intake.

"We want to know if this price sensitivity is just for a specific good, such as soda, or if it translates into changes in diet quality and weight outcomes," said Lisa Powell, senior research scientist at UIC's Institute for Health Research and Policy and principal investigator of the study. "It will help lay the foundation on the extent to which these taxes may be effective policy instruments to generate behavior change and potentially reduce obesity."

Current fat-tax rates are fairly low, ranging, for example, from 0 to 7 percent for soda.

Taxing soda is an easy target because it is clear there is not a lot of nutritional value, said Powell. But if you look at taxing all foods or beverages with a certain amount of sugar or fat, that might include a fortified cereal that could also be healthy.

"Defining healthy and unhealthy when there are many different components to food can be difficult," she said.

According to the researchers, the study is critical because Americans are increasingly consuming poor diets, which have contributed to a public health crisis with more than 17 percent of children and 32 percent of adults being obese.

Powell's co-investigators at UIC are Frank Chaloupka, distinguished professor of economics and director of the Health Policy Center; Carol Braunschweig, associate professor of human nutrition; Jamie Chriqui, senior research scientist at the Institute for Health Research and Policy; and Euna Han, health economist at the Institute for Health Research and Policy.

UIC ranks among the nation's leading research universities and is Chicago's largest university with 25,000 students, 12,000 faculty and staff, 15 colleges and the state's major public medical center. A hallmark of the campus is the Great Cities Commitment, through which UIC faculty, students and staff engage with community, corporate, foundation and government partners in hundreds of programs to improve the quality of life in metropolitan areas around the world.

For more information about UIC, visit www.uic.edu