In the News

October 2024

Reporters locally and nationally turn to the School of Medicine for expertise and research news. Here are some examples from near and far.

Kristine Erlandson, MD, MSc, professor of medicine, explained that a National Institutes of Health study finding that long COVID continues to evade a clear diagnostic test. Erlandson, who was the lead author of the study, told NBC News in August: “I think it is consistent with what we’ve learned more recently. It’s really a symptom-driven condition and there isn’t a specific laboratory value that points us towards that definition or diagnosing someone with long Covid.”

Jay Lemery, MD, professor of emergency medicine and co-director of the Climate and Health Program, was quoted by Colorado Public Radio in July in a report on the health risks of excessive heat. “Heat is a great stressor to the human body. The first thing to do is to be aware that heat is a risk,” said Lemery. “And of course the times of the day to avoid the heat start in the late morning and go into the early evening.”

Cristin Welle, PhD, associate professor of neurosurgery and physiology and biophysics, was quoted in a May article in The New York Times about the first patient to receive a Neuralink brain implant. Welle, who started the neural interfaces program at the Food and Drug Administration, said the case suggested that the company still faced hurdles in developing a durable device. If the threads were implanted deeper, they could still ease out and leave fibers rubbing on the surface of the brain, possibly increasing the amount of scarring—and signal loss—in the area, she said.

James Cooper, MD, professor of medicine, talked in July with 9News, the Denver affiliate of NBC, about Liz Young, a kidney donor who has continued to compete in Ironman competitions. “Very few limitations for kidney donors over the long term,” Cooper said. “Liz is a great example of taking that to the extreme where you can compete at the highest level with only one kidney. I think she’s a great example of how kidney donation is a wonderful thing for a patient who needs a kidney. It’s a wonderful thing for society. And in the long term, the impact on your lifestyle is minimal to none.”

Maya Bunik, MD, professor of pediatrics, was quoted in August in an ABC News report on a study finding that health care providers may be diagnosing too many cases of tongue-tie in babies and children, leading to unnecessary surgeries. “There are a lot of other things that could be going on with the baby,” she said. “Sometimes babies are sleepy. Sometimes babies have had other conditions. Sometimes, it’s because the mom’s milk supply has been affected by her medical conditions … so there’s lots of reasons why the baby may not be able to get enough milk.”

Amanda Piquet, MD, associate professor of neurology and director of the Autoimmune Neurology Program, was mentioned in Rolling Stone in June as the inaugural holder of the Celine Dion Foundation Endowed Chair in Autoimmune Neurology. The magazine quotes a campus news release that says: “The Autoimmune Neurology Program’s mission is to provide the best neurological care and improve the quality of life for every patient with an autoimmune neurological disorder—all while effectively integrating education and research into the clinical experience.”

Michael Puente, Jr., MD, assistant professor of ophthalmology, described his efforts to get the Food and Drug Administration to overturn its longstanding ban on cornea donations from men who have sex with men. “I think we need to just keep having more and more people chime in, letting them know that we want to have a health care system that’s based on science and evidence from the 2020s, not the 1990s,” he said in an interview with Colorado Public Radio in July.

Laura Scherer, PhD, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology, discussed with National Public Radio her research on informing women in their 40s about the harms and benefits of mammograms. "In an ideal world, all women would get this information and then get to have their further questions answered by their doctor and come up with a screening plan that is right for them given their preferences, their values and their risk level," she said in a July report.

Stacy Fischer, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine, was quoted by The New York Times in June in an article about a Food and Drug Administration warning that mushroom edibles that contained toxic levels of a psychoactive chemical. “It really worries me from a public health standpoint: Trying to commercialize these with no regulation whatsoever means you might have all kinds of things being placed into these kinds of products,” Fischer said.

Christopher Hoyte, MD, professor of emergency medicine and medical director of the Rocky Mountain Poison Center, noted in a The New York Times article in June that there is little regulatory oversight of mushroom chocolates. “There’s not great quality control around some of these products to know exactly what’s in them,” he said.

Steven Berkowitz, MD, professor of psychiatry and director of the Stress, Trauma, Adversity, Research and Treatment Center, was quoted by Smithsonian magazine in June in an article about whether technology can help more accurately diagnose mental illnesses, specifically about a phone app that measures how people’s eyes respond to various visual tasks as a way to detect PTSD. “People who are traumatized are much more likely to avoid looking at something upsetting than people who aren’t,” he said.

Emmy Betz, MD, MPH, professor of emergency medicine, was quoted in a June article in the Las Vegas Review Journal about how to consider health issues such as cognitive impairment and dementia because decision-making, attention, judgment, and risk assessment are compromised in older people with these conditions. “This is a big challenge when it comes to driving, because people don’t react appropriately and self-regulate,” she said.

Melanie Cree, MD, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics, was quoted by ABC News in a June report about the use of weight-loss drugs by teenagers. "When girls have [polycystic ovary syndrome] and extra weight, they have a much higher risk for type 2 diabetes,” she said, “they have insulin resistance, extra fat and inflammation in their liver, higher rates of depression and really seem to struggle."

Jennifer Taylor-Cousar, MD, MSCS, professor of medicine, explained to The New York Times in May that people from minority communities have struggled to receive lifesaving care for cystic fibrosis for decades, in large part because many doctors were traditionally taught that the disease almost exclusively affects white people.

Patricia Braun, MD, MPH, professor of pediatrics, was quoted in May by The New York Times in an article about a study examining links between prenatal fluoride exposure and child development. As a spokesperson of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Bruan said, “There is nothing about this study that alarms me or would make me recommend that pregnant women stop drinking tap water.”

Daniel Pastula, MD, MHS, professor of neurology, was quoted in The New York Times in May in an article about brain parasites, the damage they can cause, and how they get there. “Some of them actively invade the tissues and destroy tissues,” he said.

Adam Gilden, MD, associate professor of medicine, commented in August on a study showing that weight-loss drugs significantly reduce diabetes risk for people who were overweight, and that these drugs may not have lasting impact after people stop taking them. “It confirms what we know about anti-obesity medications, which is that the course of treatment is indefinite,” he said in an article in Everyday Health. “These results tell us specifically that even after three years of treatment, people start to regain weight if medication is discontinued.”

David Howell, PhD, associate professor of orthopedics, discussed his study of adolescents and aerobic exercise after a concussion in an August article in Healio. The study found that over 150 minutes of aerobic exercise a week following a concussion improved sleep quality. The data are also consistent with past research on the benefits of exercise after a concussion “but add new insights that aerobic exercise at a higher volume than previously documented also may lead to benefits beyond concussion symptoms,” he said.

Douglas Fritz, a third-year medical student, discussed the need to address health issues related to climate change in medical school curriculum in an August article in Nature Medicine. He noted that he avoids politically charged terms and focuses on the patient’s context and asks questions to understand how environmental determinants linked to climate can affect health. “When a patient comes in, regardless of whether or not I think they agree with climate change or see it as a political issue, I just try and keep it very focused on their health,” he said.

Emmy Betz, MD, MPH, professor of emergency medicine and director of the Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative, was interviewed by the PBS News Hour in June after the U.S. Surgeon General declared gun violence a public health crisis. “I think it lays out two key tenets,” she said. “The first is that this is a health problem. We are trying to prevent the injuries, the deaths, the psychological harm related to firearms. So, it's not about the device itself. It's about the negative consequences it can have. And it's also about acknowledging that public health is a science. We have a framework on how we can prevent these injuries and deaths, the harm that nobody wants to have happen. So, I think having a report of this magnitude really lays it out and points us in a way forward.”