During the months-long pandemic, healthcare providers have seen a lot of things, often on levels they have never seen before. From brain fog and loss of smell to leg clots and purple toes, what began as a mysterious pulmonary disease has shown the world that its destructive powers far transcend the lungs.
Last spring, as healthcare providers and scientists around the world scrambled to treat a surge of patients infected with a virus that experts knew little about, one thing quickly became clear: SARS-CoV-2 strikes people differently.
Researchers peered into the deepest of slumbers – the barely-breathing sleep of arctic ground squirrels – to better understand how the small mammals can emerge from an eight-month hibernation with a minimal loss of muscle mass.
Using metabolite profiles in the squirrels’ blood, a recently developed technology, the researchers showed that the animals have uniquely adapted to their extreme habitats by converting bodily waste products into essential nutrients. Despite spending the long winter curled into a ball and breathing only once per minute, the hardy rodents awaken in spring unscathed.
Debra Melani | 
February 22, 2021
Name a heart disorder after an octopus trap, and you lure in cardiologists attracted by the “catchy” name. Also label it “broken heart” syndrome, and reporters swarm en masse every February, looking for an enticing story for Valentine’s Day or American Heart Month.
Among other accomplishments, Blackwood opened a private practice; served three years in the U.S. Air Force, during which time he opened the Radiology Department at Hamilton Air Force Base in California; and was the first African American clinical professor of medicine at the CU School of Medicine.
Her sons, along with the University of Colorado College of Nursing, established a memorial nursing scholarship in her name and hope she will be inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame.
Dr. Fernando Holguin, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Anschutz Medical Campus, said the studies reflect what he’s seen. “There were no hospitalizations related to these events and people recover in one to two days,” Holguin said. He said the symptoms pale in comparison to those who get hit hard with COVID-19.
“Usually, researchers pick things they suspect would be risk factors for heart failure — smoking, for example — and then look at smokers versus nonsmokers,” said the senior author, Dr. David P. Kao, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Colorado [School of Medicine]. “But machine learning identifies variables that are predictive of either increased or decreased risk, but that you haven’t necessarily thought of.”
CU Anschutz Newsroom