Research Roundup
From side effect-free cancer research to studying the affordability crisis in American health care, DU researchers are finding innovative solutions to the biggest challenges in health care and medicine.
Reducing depression during pregnancy leads to more full-term births
New research from psychology professor Elysia Davis underscores the importance of mental health care for pregnant people—and suggests that treating depression during pregnancy can lead to longer gestation time and healthier babies.
Davis worked with researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus to study how prenatal depression intervention can benefit both moms and babies. The results were overwhelmingly positive.
“What this suggests is that by reducing the mother’s depression during pregnancy, we can increase the rate of babies born full term, ultimately impacting morbidity and mortality rates among newborns,” Davis says.
Improving outcomes of a less invasive hip replacement procedure
More than half a million people get hip replacement surgeries each year. The procedure is life-changing, allowing increased mobility and improving patients’ quality of life. Traditionally, it’s an invasive surgery, requiring large incisions through muscle that impact patients’ recovery. While there is a less invasive operation available, it reduces surgeon’s visibility, making placing and orientating an implant properly more challenging. What’s more, pelvic positioning and movement differ from patient to patient.
In DU’s Center for Orthopaedic Biomechanics, Chadd Clary, associate professor of mechanical and materials engineering, and his team are studying pelvic mobility to develop a patient-specific approach that will increase the success of the less invasive procedure and improve patient outcomes.
Discovering novel treatment for pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer takes the lives of approximately 50,000 people in the U.S. each year. It is hard to detect, and existing treatments like chemotherapy and radiation are costly, carry significant side effects and are often limited in their effectiveness.
Utilizing a spectrometer developed at the Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science, Dali Sun, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of BioSun Lab, and his fellow researchers discovered that the tumor cells were pumping out certain types of molecules and, in turn, found evidence that the molecules—certain dietary amino acids—could be used as an effective, low-cost and side effect-free treatment on its own or combined with existing treatments.
“Combined with chemotherapy, it can increase the survival rate,” Sun says. “It can be used as a combination therapy for the patient with the current chemotherapy, but the amino acids themselves can also inhibit the tumor growth.”
Fighting heart disease with an innovative heart assist pump
Heart disease—which encompasses numerous diagnoses—is the leading cause of death in America and is expected to increase in the coming years due to a growing and aging population.
That’s why Ali Azadani, associate professor and director of the DU Cardiovascular Biomechanics Lab, and his colleagues are working to develop new and innovative treatments and cardiovascular implants that could improve the health and lives of millions of Americans and people across the globe. Utilizing engineering methods, the lab recently developed a novel implantable heart assist pump, designed to treat heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), a deadly condition that affects more than three million Americans.
Defining affordability in health care is critical to bringing down high costs
From prescription drugs and checkups to ambulance rides and hospital stays, health care in America is expensive—at times, so costly that people forego treatment altogether. Despite policymakers’ efforts to rein in the high costs, thanks to a fragmented health insurance landscape and different metrics being used to measure affordability, little progress has been made.
Govind Persad, associate professor in the Sturm College of Law, recently published research focused on the importance of affordability in debates around health care, the many failed attempts to reduce costs and the growing need for a clear and consistent definition of affordability.
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