CU Anschutz In The News

In general, children do not get severely sick from COVID-19. But, according to Joaquin Espinosa, director of the Linda Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome at the University of Colorado, it’s not yet clear if that rule holds for children with medically complicated conditions like Down syndrome. “We don't have a lot of data on the very young pediatric population,” he said. “But the prediction is that we will see higher rates of complication even at the younger ages among those with Down syndrome.”

“Well, what I would really like to study is the antibody response and the maturity of the antibody response,” said Dr. Kim Jordan, an immunologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz campus in Denver who is helping to find answers about the virus’ unique behavior. “But why is that inflammation not being resolved? Why is the virus infection continuing? And why are some people I’ve heard 30 days out still testing positive for COVID and still have the virus? Like what is different about this virus that our immune system can’t resolve it?” she asked.

Dr. Karsten Bartels, an associate professor specializing in anesthesiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, said ketamine's use in hospitals is well-established. It must be administered with caution, Bartels added, and an understanding of the patient. "One has to take into account, for example, what the patient's baseline status is," Bartels said. "If you have a patient who maybe takes a stimulant as a prescription medication or if somebody has taken illicit stimulants, such as cocaine or amphetamines or something like that, then the side-effect profile of ketamine would be very undesirable."

Brandi Freeman joined KUNC’s Colorado Edition to give advice about how to talk with children about the protests, racism and police violence. Dr. Freeman is a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Colorado and director of diversity and inclusion for the department of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus researchers launched a website to help people make difficult decisions about living with dementia. An estimated 5 million people in the U.S. are living with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia. The new online resource, Safety in Dementia, is intended to help caregivers — or, if possible, people in the early stages of dementia — plan for the future before the illness progresses to the point where, for example, a person with Alzheimer’s disease mistakes their spouse for an intruder and reaches for a firearm.

Emmy Betz, an emergency physician and researcher at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, doesn’t dispute that there’s something going on with altitude. “There clearly are differences in suicide rates by altitude and that's a trend that has been seen and documented over a number of years,” says Betz, who just wrapped up a stint on the Colorado Suicide Prevention Commission. “The question is: Is it the altitude alone? Or is it something else? Or, most likely, I think it's a mix of contributing factors.” As she and others have written in a number of publications, there are limitations to looking at the question of altitude and mental health by aggregating public health data.

The pilot program, administered by the College of Nursing at the University of Colorado Anschutz, had two goals. The first was to increase access to MAT services and medications which include methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone. "Those are either medications that help you to not go into withdrawal and help to rebalance the chemical imbalance in your brain that may happen when you have an opioid use disorder," said Tanya Sorrell, an associate professor at the College of Nursing, who helped oversee the grants.

“That's the fear, but I don't know that we have a lot of evidence that that's true,” says Dr. Sean O’Leary, an associate professor in pediatrics and infectious diseases at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “In the places that have had longstanding policies of not having any exemptions -- West Virginia and Mississippi, for example -- their kindergarten rates are 99 percent. They've maintained very high vaccination rates for many years.”