School of Medicine In the News

As of March 22, 2023, 15,007 Coloradans have now died in the coronavirus pandemic.

Guest Commentary by CU Anschutz Medical Campus Chancellor Donald M. Elliman and CU School of Medicine Dean John J. Reilly, Jr:

Doctors often use urine tests to make sure patients taking medication for opioid addiction are sticking with treatment. A new study suggests they may be missing some cheaters.

Tenecteplase is easier to administer – a single, immediate IV push that takes just five seconds, according to Sharon Poisson, a neurohospitalist and medical co-director of the Comprehensive Stroke Program at the UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital on the Anschutz Medical Campus.

Best Buy isn't just the place where you buy big-screen TVs and computers. It also provides technology that might one day help take care of you or a loved one at home.

Most of the trees still look like they’re closed for winter, but they are already making pollen. Allergy season has arrived on the Colorado Front Range.

Lalit Bajaj, chief quality, equity and outcomes officer at Children’s Hospital Colorado [and professor of pediatrics at CU school of Medicine], said the hospital is “proud” of its work to understand and meet communities’ needs.

Using the DataDerm database has uncovered disparities in prescription patterns, but it’s still early in the process of understanding why those disparities might exist, said Robert Dellavalle, MD, PhD, MSPH, professor

Katie Eastman spoke with  Emmy Betz, who as an emergency medicine doctor, sees firsthand the toll gun violence can take. She also works to find solutions as the deputy director of the Injury and Violence Prevention Center at the University of Colorado. “I would say my experience on the whole has been that people are really interested and appreciative of an approach that cuts through the noise,” says Betz.

There's a unique art display in Aurora featuring the photography of a local storm chaser.

Anna Shah, [assistant professor of neurology at CU School of Medicine] who specializes in patients with MS and other related disorders of the nervous system, joined us to talk about the disease.

During a stroke, every minute counts. A new medication that is faster and easier to administer for patients experiencing an acute ischemic stroke is now available at UCHealth hospitals across the state.

UCHealth hospitals across Colorado have begun treating patients experiencing acute ischemic stroke with a medication that is faster and simpler to administer – “both key during a stroke, when every minute counts.”

The American Cancer Society says younger people are being diagnosed with colon cancer at nearly twice the rate than in 1995.

As a field service representative for a slot machine company, Ryan Alexander, 37, of Louisville, KY, spends his working hours in casinos, covering a large territory including Norfolk, VA, Indianapolis, and Charlotte.

Teri Griege has always loved sports. She participated in high school sports but once she got married, built her career as a nurse and started her family — a son and a daughter — running took a back seat.

Last year, contract labor in healthcare costs soared 258 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic. With Ascension's operating margin falling to -2.9 percenting and Providence reporting $1.7B in operating losses last year, systems need to think creatively to improve profits.

The end of life can be a time of reconciliation. But often not for LGBTQ people who face rampant discrimination and are often shut out by the way people talk and listen to them. Let me give you an example. 

 UCHealth leaders said they’re seeing an increase in young people suffering from noise-induced hearing loss. 

In response to the overdose crisis that has consumed Colorado, largely attributable to illicitly manufactured fentanyl, some lawmakers are turning toward “supply side” interventions that they believe will curb overdose deaths.

Our mortality is too scary for most of us to consider, but people with terminal cancer don't have a choice.

Spring allergy sufferers are dealing with symptoms even sooner than usual.

In the United States, data shows more than 11,000,000 women are living with uterine fibroids. There's no specific cause for them, and medical professionals say much more research needs to be done. 

Lifelong bachelor status was associated with elevated risk for mortality in men, but not women, with heart failure, researchers reported at the American College of Cardiology Scientific Session.

A woman donated part of her liver -- to a stranger. Researchers study "altruistic donors."

Dr. Swati Patel joins us to talk about raising awareness for colorectal cancer.

By the time her daughter turned 3, Ramona Santos Torres noticed something not quite right about the child’s speech.

Families of patients are also susceptible to developing medical PTSD, Tim Amass, a physician and professor of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical care at the University of Colorado Medical School, tells Inverse. Last April, Amass, and his colleagues published a study in JAMA showing that, during the pandemic, instances of PTSD among family members of patients in the ICU nearly doubled compared to pre-pandemic

As Colorado marks another COVID-19 anniversary, the takeaway for historians and epidemiologists is as simple as it is jarring: Americans haven't learned the lessons from history.

Dianna Cowern, also known as "Physics Girl" on social media, has been dealing with chronic fatigue and other symptoms for nine months. She has a severe case of long COVID -- experiencing symptoms long after an initial COVID infection.

For the first time, patients with damaged tricuspid valves in their hearts might have a safe treatment that actually helps.

In a Colorado mountain town, Christine Collins injected herself with black tar heroin while hanging out with friends in a cozy basement a few days after her 30th birthday. Sitting beneath a “Happy Birthday” sign with hearts scrawled in colorful sharpies, she overdosed.

Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, health care workers suffered more workplace injuries as a result of violence than any other profession, with approximately 654,000 harmed annually, according to American Hospital Association studies.

Drug manufacturer Eli Lilly announced Wednesday it will cap the out-of-pocket cost of its insulin at $35 a month. The move will bring relief to more than 300,000 Coloradans living with diabetes.

Cystic fibrosis is a crippling disease, and anybody of any ethnicity can get it. But for Black people and people of color, it often gets overlooked or misdiagnosed. 

Huntington’s disease is a progressive neurological disorder for which there are currently no disease-modifying therapies. 

Dr. Satish Garg with the University of Colorado Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes says drug manufacturers need to lower insulin prices.

Patients with asthma who experienced intimate partner violence had higher predicted rates of uncontrolled asthma, according to an abstract presented at the American Acade

Numbers don’t represent people. But when you look at the numbers there’s an alarming trend showing a rise in violence among teens. Those working to prevent it are humans who say they are burnt out.

Adults with type 1 diabetes who used an automated insulin delivery system with settings changed by the system instead of a provider had improvements in time in range and HbA1c at 13 weeks, according to a speaker.

Masks will no longer be required at two major Colorado health systems, UCHealth and Denver Health, starting Wednesday, March 1. 

A career in the NFL on average lasts just a little over three years – giving the NFL the nickname of "Not For Long.” As a player's NFL career comes to a close, many players choose another area of interest within the sport.

Carey Candrian knows there isn’t much space for art in medicine or academia.

Also referred to as “fail first,” step therapy is an insurer-mandated process that overrules doctor recommendations and disregards a patient’s specific medical needs. Ultimately, it’s a time-consuming process that can lead to worsened health outcomes, writes co-author Frank Scott, an associate professor of medicine-gastroenterology at the University of Colorado.

In a comparative study of middle-aged patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) on rituximab (Rituxan; Genentech) and ocrelizumab (Ocrevus; Genentech), findings showed similar safety and efficacy over a 2-year period.

A panel at the 2023 Advanced Technologies and Treatments for Diabetes conference in Berlin, Germany, explored this topic and what it means for the most serious complication in diabetes care.

When heart failure strikes, being a lifelong bachelor may mean you might die sooner than women or previously married men diagnosed with the same condition, a new study suggests.

Sunnie Kim, MD, assistant professor, medicine — medical oncology, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, contextualizes the use of tislelizumab (BGB-A317) as a frontline treatment option in advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). 

Let’s say you’ve opened the refrigerator but forgot what you were going to grab. Or something important came up at a meeting, but you can’t recall the details.

Emmy Betz, director of the Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said it’s hard to prejudge the efficacy of the proposals. There’s been limited federal funding for gun violence prevention research, she said, and the different regulations and characteristics of states and communities make it hard to suss out an individual policy’s effects.

Steven Federico, chief government and community affairs officer at Denver Health, estimated the bill could cost the hospital about $97 million. If it passed, Denver Health would have no way to pay for care coordination and could have to reduce outpatient services, he said. “Twenty-first century care is really outpatient care, and furthermore it’s team-based care,” he said. “If facility fees were eliminated, we would not be able to provide 21st century care.”

In today’s AMA Update, we cover firearm-related injury and suicide—and the role physicians can play in helping to prevent it with Emmy Betz, MD, MPH, professor of emergency medicine and director of the "Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative" at the University of Colorado School of Medicine

The bill is based on a "terrible misnomer" that would devastate the industry, opponents say.

How do you turn kindergartners into wranglers? “Little bitty saddles,” Melissa Vander Hamm said, “for little bitty kids.”

The first hint that something was not right for Aaron Crane came during one of his favorite hobbies.

Alzheimer's disease remains incurable, despite the best efforts of scientists and a number of recent discoveries.

Neudy Rojop, 29, stands on a bumpy, cobbled lane in Guatemala in the small rural village of San Rafael Pacayá. It leads to the home where she grew up and where she still lives today.

Though movies and TV shows love to show the trope of the lonely genius, working alone to save the world, in reality collaboration is a necessity in order to realize the most incredible projects.

The COVID-19 antiviral treatment Paxlovid continues to work against Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, new research shows.

In June 2021, researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora turned a magnifying glass on Nature’s written journalism. 

Researchers from the University of Colorado School of Medicine say the prescription drug Paxlovid remains a very effective treatment against the COVID-19 omicron variants.

 Spring is just around the corner and allergies often come bundled with it.

The closure of several Colorado libraries due to meth contamination has put the spotlight back on the methamphetamine epidemic, which is sometimes called “the silent epidemic.”

A diabetic coma, also called a diabetes-related coma, is what happens when a person with diabetes has a blood sugar level that becomes dangerously high or low. 

Stereotactic body radiation therapy combined with single-dose durvalumab before surgery appeared safe and induced durable responses among patients with HPV-unrelated locally advanced head and neck cancer, according to study results.

Genetic variants related to GERD heightened risks for both asthma and atopic dermatitis by 21%, according to study results published in American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

It's early morning in banana farm country in the lowlands of western Guatemala, about 10 miles from the Mexican border. 

New 6-month results from a first-in-human trial investigating the SpyGlass drug delivery platform indicated continued reductions in intraocular pressure (IOP) in patients with glaucoma or ocular hypertension.

A researcher at CU Anschutz has landed a major grant to take a closer look on the disparities of care for elderly people in the LGBT community.

After more than five decades of trying, the drug industry is on the verge of providing effective immunizations against the respiratory syncytial virus, which has put an estimated 90,000 U.S. infants and small children in the hospital since the start of October.

In December, computational biologists Casey Greene and Milton Pividori embarked on an unusual experiment: they asked an assistant who was not a scientist to help them improve three of their research papers.

Consider this: Nearly half of all Americans used at least one prescription drug in the past month, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are urging people to stop using EzriCare Artificial Tears after the eye drops were linked to a drug-resistant bacterial strain resulting in hospitalizations, multiple cases of vision loss, and one death, the agency said Wednesday.

Much of the national debate over gun laws focuses on homicide, and why not? That is what gets the most media coverage.

State officials have released their first estimate of how many people in Colorado have been hit by long COVID-19.

The addition of all-trans retinoic acid to pembrolizumab conferred benefit to patients with metastatic melanoma, according to results of a phase 1b/phase 2 trial published in Clinical Cancer Research.

Maybe you’ve noticed: Eggs are really expensive.

Amazon has experimented with different projects in healthcare the past few years, but its current focus seems to be at the pharmacy counter — the digital one, at least.

For the past two or three years, many of my friends, women mostly in their early 50s, have found themselves in an unexpected state of suffering. 

Weeks after Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest on the field, we're still talking about the medical response that saved his life.

One major concern with temperatures below zero is exposure to the cold.

This winter season is dealing Colorado’s Front Range and other parts of the state another dip into sub-zero weather — and that is causing folks to seek medical treatment for frostbite.

For a patient who needs a liver, living donation offers an alternative to staying on a list of over 10,000 people waiting for a liver transplant. But what happens when your donor is not a match? 

Frostbite is a concern when temperatures fall dangerously low as what is happening to start this week.

Surviving a COVID-19 infection is only half the battle. Approximately 20-30% of people who contract COVID-19 develop post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), commonly called “long COVID.”

Covid-19 has become the eighth most common cause of death among children in the United States, according to a study published Monday.

A man in Denver paints a message on his car: “I’m going to kill them.”

The high temperature in Denver won't get above freezing until Tuesday. While the cold snap isn't as long as one earlier in the winter, temperatures are still dangerously cold, according to the National Weather Service.

“(Ending the waiver) stops setting aside buprenorphine as another medicine that needs some kind of special understanding in order to utilize it clinically,” said Josh Blum, a Denver Health physician and past president of the Colorado chapter of the American Society of Addiction Medicine [and associate professor of medicine at CU School of Medicine].

In parts of rural Colorado, where the cattle and antelope often far outnumber the people, doctors are few and far between.

When an elderly woman with advanced Alzheimer's disease entered Laura Mosqueda's examination room for the first time, the patient sat slumped in her wheelchair.

Lotte Dyrbye, the chief well-being officer for the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said she often hears from early-career physicians and other medical professionals who want to work fewer hours to avoid burnout. These medical workers are deciding that to be in it for the long haul requires a day every week or two to decompress, Dyrbye says. But as staff cut back their hours, it costs medical organizations money and may compromise access to care.

Older people living with HIV who used cannabis within the past month were about twice as likely to sometimes miss doses of their antiretroviral medications, according to a study published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

The treatment landscape for patients with bladder cancer has rapidly changed with the addition of PD-1 and PD-L1 inhibitors approved for urothelial carcinoma, antibody drug conjugates like enfortumab vedotin-ejfv (Pacdev), and also targeted agents such as erdafitinib (Balversa) for patients with select FGFR mutations.

Ian Espinoza, a high-achieving scholar at South High School, is one of only 10 Colorado seniors to be accepted into a prestigious collegiate program that will fast-track him to medical school.

According to researchers in the Department of Ophthalmology at University of Colorado School of Medicine, a newer, faster technique for preparing corneal tissue for transplantation has been shown to be safe and effective.

In 2021, 56% of LGBTQ+ adults reported experiencing some form of discrimination from a health care provider. For those who are transgender or gender non-conforming, the rate of discrimination from health care providers vaults to 70%.

People of color get left behind at every stage of the organ transplantation process, but Colorado donor groups and transplant centers are trying to close those gaps.

“The greater harm is in delaying,” said Matt Haemer, an obesity specialist at Children’s Hospital Colorado [and associate professor of pediatrics at CU School of Medicine].