Joaquin Espinosa directs the Linda Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome in Aurora, Colo. He says people with the condition have a hyperactive immune system that protects them from some cancers but also leads to chronic inflammation. … Another team at the Crnic Institute is taking a different approach to modulating the immune system. Dr. Huntington Potter says the idea is to boost a special immune cell found in the brain.
In Provincetown, Mass., this summer, a lot of vaccinated people got infected with the coronavirus. And the assumption was that this was an example of vaccinated people with breakthrough infections giving their disease to other vaccinated people. But Ross Kedl says there's a problem with that conclusion. “In all these cases where you have these big breakthrough infections, there's always unvaccinated people in the room.” Kedl is an immunologist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He says it's hard to prove that an infected vaccinated person actually was responsible for transmitting their infection to someone else.
And at Colorado's partnership, a survey of patients from 2015 to 2020 found statistically significant drops in stress and poor physical health, as well as fewer missed medical appointments among its 69 respondents, says Dr. Angela Sauaia, a professor at the Colorado School of Public Health who led the research.
"I've been trying to shout it from the rooftops," to get parents to take their kids in for routine vaccines, says Dr. Sean O'Leary, professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and vice chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics. Many parents worry about COVID-19 and when they can vaccinate their kids against it, O'Leary notes. But he says, "Frankly, a lot of the diseases that we vaccinate kids for are more severe in children than COVID, and so the last thing we want as we reenter the school year is outbreaks of these other vaccine-preventable diseases."
"It's so subjective and situational," says May Chu, a clinical professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health, who led the research on masks and respirators for the World Health Organization. "It's easier to think it through if you know what the risks are that you need to evaluate."
Well, benzene is a known carcinogen. No level of exposure is considered safe. That said, the levels found in sunscreens were relatively low. So by themselves, they don't pose a big risk. That's according to Dr. Daniel Teitelbaum of the Colorado School of Public Health. He spent decades studying benzene exposure. But he says the problem is that we are exposed to low levels of benzene from various sources all the time, in the air we breathe from things like petrochemical refining and vehicle exhaust. “And that, of course, adds up. And that's why low levels of any single product used repeatedly combined with all of our background exposures increases the rates of cancer in the population.”
All this portends a more uneven pandemic, says Dr. Fernando Holguin, a pulmonologist and critical care doctor at the Latino Research and Policy Center at the Colorado School of Public Health. He worries cases, hospitalizations and deaths will keep flaring up in less-vaccinated communities, especially predominantly Hispanic communities in parts of Colorado or other states where overall vaccination rates are poor. "They're at risk, especially moving into the fall of seeing increasing waves of infections. I think it is really critical that people really become vaccinated," Holguin said.
"The effective treatments for severe obesity in adolescents are really just one: That is bariatric surgery," says Dr. Thomas Inge, a director of adolescent bariatric surgery at Children's Hospital Colorado [and CU School of Medicine professor] and a lead scientist on a multiyear National Institutes of Health study tracking young bariatric patients. "The unwritten story here is the remarkable disparity between the number of teenagers that are eligible for the surgery versus the number that are getting it."
