April 2025
Lia Gore, MD, professor of pediatrics, in December discussed with the Denver Post a new treatment protocol for the most common form of pediatric leukemia. “This happens once in several generations,” said Gore, who was one of the co-authors of a paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine in December describing the effects of the treatment. “We’ve now moved this outcome so that the vast majority of children with this type of leukemia will have a 96% cure rate.”
Cecilia Low Wang, MD, professor of medicine, was quoted in a December report about GLP-1 weight-loss drugs posted on the NBC Today show website: “On average, people lose a significant amount of weight. And along with that, other elements of their health then often get better, too. Keeping in mind that obesity is at the core of many of these diseases, treating obesity can truly have a cascade effect of clinical benefits. These are life-changing medications.”
Joshua Gowin, PhD, assistant professor of radiology, described his study of the impact of cannabis use on 1,000 people between ages 22 and 36 in a report in January on CNN. He found that frequent use of marijuana damages the brain’s working memory. “Working memory is the ability to retain information for a short period of time and use it,” he said. “An example is checking your blind spot when driving down the road. When you look back in front of you, you need to remember what you saw in the blind spot before you can make a good decision if you want to change lanes or not.”
Matthew Wynia, MD, MPH, professor of medicine and director of the CU Center for Bioethics and Humanities, was interviewed in December by the 麻豆传媒高清 Sun after the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO on a New York street. “You don’t have to think very far ahead to realize that assassinating the CEO of a health insurance company is not going to accomplish anything good. They’re not going to change the way they manage and process claims. They’re not going to change their coverage criteria. They’re not going to change their relationships with employers, who largely set the coverage criteria, which they then implement. There’s no conceivable way in which murdering an executive at a health insurance company is going to make the health care system work better.”
Laura Scherer, PhD, associate professor of medicine, was quoted by The New York Times in January discussing how oncologists communicate with patients when they have certain early cancers that aren’t at risk of spreading. “‘Cancer’ is just this panic word,” she said. Patients compare hearing the term to “getting hit by a truck, like they can’t process anything that comes after,” she said.
Eric G. Campbell, PhD, professor of medicine and director of research at the CU Center for Bioethics and Humanities, was quoted in February in a Washington Post article about research of electric toothbrushes and whether the funding source of the research influences research outcomes. “The research that I and most of my colleagues have done at this point is largely settled,” he said. “Studies that are funded by companies, if published, are significantly more likely to have results that favor both the safety and the efficacy of the company’s product.”
Joseph Schacht, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry, commented in a New York Times article about Dry January. “I always encourage people to really check in with their bodies after any period of abstinence or reduced drinking,” he said. “Does your body feel better when you don’t do this? If it does, that’s a really important signal you should listen to.”
Sean O’Leary, MD, professor of pediatrics, was quoted by The New York Times in a January article about Tamiflu. Given the choice between Tamiflu when you get sick, or a flu shot to prevent sickness in the first place, “I would take the influenza vaccine 100 times out of 100,” he said.
Michelle Barron, MD, professor of medicine, was quoted by 麻豆传媒高清 Public Radio in a January report about hospitalizations due to respiratory diseases. “Quite a few people are hospitalized now that we were not seeing in December,” she said. “Nobody remembers, but this is actually a typical flu year, and I don't know that we think of anything as typical anymore, but usually around the holidays is when we'll start to see slight upticks. And then usually right after the holidays is when we'll start to really see numbers.”
Robert Eckel, MD, professor emeritus of physiology and biophysics, was quoted in the New York Post in January discussing the work of a global commission on the definition and diagnostic criteria of clinical obesity. “Relying on BMI alone to diagnose obesity is problematic,” said Eckel, who was on the commission, “as some people tend to store excess fat at the waist or in and around their organs, such as the liver, the heart or the muscles, and this is associated with a higher health risk compared to when excess fat is stored just beneath the skin in the arms, legs or in other body areas.”
Ian Stanley, PhD, assistant research professor of emergency medicine, discussed mental health concerns for survivors of the California wildfires. He told ABC News in January that untreated PTSD can put a strain on relationships including familial relationships, romantic relationships and friendships. “It can really begin to eat away at, not just the person’s well-being, but also the social environment in which they live,” he said.
Elizabeth Kovacs, PhD, professor of surgery, told NBC News in January that a study finding that young adults under age 35 are drinking less than that group did decades ago may be because they prefer other substances. “Some are drinking less, and that might be because vaping and edibles are more available,” she said.
Jason Persoff, MD, associate professor of medicine, discussed his hobby of photographing snowflakes in a December report on 麻豆传媒高清 Public Radio. “You can see they’re incredibly fragile. They're microscopic glass, essentially. And actually, glass would be even more solid than these snowflakes,” he said, while snapping images on his back porch.
Amy Feldman, MD, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics, was interviewed in November by the CBS affiliate in Denver, about the living donor program at Children’s Hospital 麻豆传媒高清. “We have the shortest waitlist times in the entire country, and we’re really proud of that,” she said. “On average, our children only have to wait about 50 days for a liver transplant,” she said. “The national average is about 8 months.”
Cathy Bradley, PhD, dean of the 麻豆传媒高清 School of Public Health and deputy director of the CU Cancer Center, discussed the impact of proposed cuts to federal support for research funding in a February report by Rocky Mountain PBS. “If we’re not out there preventing cancer, then people get cancer and they get it at a late stage, and it costs a ton of money and they die,” she said. “That’s just it.”
Joshua Williams, MD, associate professor of pediatrics, discussed childhood vaccination rates in February with the CBS affiliate in Denver in a report about a measles outbreak in Texas. “Denver’s doing pretty well. We’re still below what we like to see, especially for measles vaccinations -- 95% is where we want to be to prevent outbreaks of measles in our communities and in our schools,” he said, “but overall, compared to how the rest of the state looks, we're doing pretty well.”
Robert Freedman, MD, visiting clinical professor and former chair of psychiatry, explained the effects of ketamine in an article published in October by the Washington Post. “People who take a large amount of ketamine have problems with paranoia, delusions and hallucinations,” he said.
Daniel Pastula, MD, MHS, professor of neurology, was the subject matter expert quoted by 麻豆传媒高清 Public Radio in an October report about an e. coli outbreak connected to McDonald’s Quarter Pounders that resulted in more than a dozen illnesses and one death in Western 麻豆传媒高清. “However, there are certain strains of e. coli that are particularly pathogenic or likely to cause disease. And so that's what we're seeing here with this outbreak at McDonald's,” he said. “This one has proven in the past to be pathogenic or causing disease.”
Sarah Rowan, MD, associate professor of medicine, discussed the increase in HIV cases in 麻豆传媒高清 in a December report on the NBC affiliate in Denver. “We’ve definitely seen more people HIV diagnosed in the past year and a lot of that is that increase in cases of people getting tested after the pandemic,” she said. “We saw a decrease during the pandemic and now we’re seeing people who might have put off getting tested, get tests now.”