CU Anschutz In The News

“Our study provides more evidence that the gut microbiota might be playing a role in later obesity,” said lead author Maggie Stanislawski, PhD, who is a research associate at the LEAD Center, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Colorado School of Public Health, Aurora, Colorado. “If our findings can be confirmed by other studies, the gut microbiota might play an important part of the obesity prediction algorithm, to identify at-risk kids early in life, before they start to gain any excess weight that might put them at risk for later obesity.”

But a year later, researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health concluded that the air quality around oil and gas wells puts people nearby at an increased risk of developing cancer. But the oil and gas rally brought out plenty of workers who called Colorado’s fracking industry the safest in the nation.

"By uncovering this link in the genetic background between these conditions, we now know that rheumatoid arthritis associated-interstitial lung disease and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis have similar causes and may prove to have similar treatments," first author Dr. Joyce Lee, associate professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said in a press release.

Fifteen people, most of them children, have come down with AFM, acute flaccid myelitis, a disease that paralyzes the limbs, causes seizures, and makes it difficult to breathe. Researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine are now infecting mice in an attempt to learn more about this. It's a very rare disease, affecting about one in one million kids. But, for families fighting it, it's also very real. Doctors like Joyce Oleszek at Children's Hospital and researchers at the CU School of Medicine are now leading the charge nationwide on studying and trying to understand AFM’s mysterious reappearance since a similar outbreak in 2014. "Let's get children in quickly so we can get treatment started, diagnose them and help with recovery," Oleszek said.

As a nurse practitioner providing family planning care, I have seen adolescents who were physically and emotionally abused by family members. Yet, it was still horrifying to listen to adolescents recount being forced to reveal private details of their lives, including their full sexual history, and be humiliated and shamed in court. One adolescent told me that the judge required her to disclose “personal things she had never told anyone else.” Another said she had to “bare her life in front strangers,” including the judge, attorney, and court reporter, because she decided that ending her pregnancy was the best decision for herself, her family, and children she hoped to have in the future.

Standing bedside next to her instructor, Olivia Current could be just another University of Colorado nursing student, but she is not. “When I was 16, I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, and when I was 17, I had a bone marrow transplant, and at 18, my kidneys failed, and at 20, I had a kidney transplant,” she said. Her instructor, Marion Hufford is not just any teacher. “I had just started working as a nurse,” Hufford said.

"In the analyses that have been done, genetics probably plays a role that is relatively minor compared to lifestyle," says Dr. Stephen Daniels, chair of the department of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and pediatrician in chief at Children's Hospital Colorado in Aurora. "When you're talking about the development of these risk factors, which would include high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol, obesity, diabetes and cigarette smoking, a lot of the emphasis really should be on lifestyle," says Daniels, a pediatric cardiologist who focuses on prevention.

Advocates for kratom tout the popular herbal substance grown mainly in Southeast Asia as great for treating chronic pain, anxiety and heroin addiction, among many other uses, and decry Denver Environmental Health's decision to ban it for human consumption last November. But University of Colorado professor and pharmacologist Robert Valuck thinks such a prohibition makes sense even if kratom has medical value. "I'm not saying kratom doesn't work," Valuck stresses. "I'm saying we don't know if it works or what the proof is."