CU Anschutz In The News

Without more data, it’s difficult to pin that HDL improvement on a single factor, said Robert Eckel, a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado and a former president of the American Heart Association. “It can’t be because we’re losing weight, because that’s still going up, but it could be statin use. It could be a result of the decline in smoking. Or a combination of factors,” Eckel said. “Regardless, the message here is a good one. And it reflects other things we’re seeing, like the number of heart attacks which have gone down, too.

It’s no longer true “that you’re a sole cowboy out there, saving the patient on your own,” says Mark Earnest, head of internal medicine at the University of Colorado medical school.

CU Anschutz professor David Pollock talks about his latest theory of molecular evolution

On a five-member panel of experts, three are from Colorado: Michelle Sie Whitten, founder, CEO and president of the Global Down Syndrome Foundation, and Frank Stephens, the Quincy Jones Advocate for the Denver-based foundation, who lives in the Washington, D.C., area, as well as Dr. Joaquin M. Espinosa. executive director of the Linda Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. 

“In the United States, one in four children under the age of 5 years is at moderate to high risk of developmental delay, a situation in which children do not achieve motor, language, cognitive, social or adaptive skills when they should,” said lead study author Dawn Magnusson of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. “Many mothers in our study experienced challenges accessing early intervention services due to logistical challenges or competing social and financial stressors that resulted in delayed or forgone care,” Magnusson said by email.

Nursing has been linked to a reduced risk of breast cancer risk in both pre- and post-menopausal women. But, says Virginia Borges, director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center’s young women’s breast cancer program, “it gets complicated from here.” Nursing a baby changes the structure of the breast. Even after breast-feeding ends, microscopic changes in the milk-delivery system protect the breast against precancerous cells, Borges says. This effect is more common among women who have nursed more children or for longer periods than others.

“In these flood situations, there’s all that brackish water contaminated with sewage, and water, human waste, and animal filth and other things being a kind of culture broth for bacteria,” said Dr. Whitney High, the director of dermatopathology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.