Welcome to the University of Colorado School of Medicine on the Anschutz Medical Campus. A Top Ten Medical School, our departments, centers and institutes work with the University of Colorado Hospital, Children's Hospital Colorado Barbara Davis Center.

The Center for Women's Health Research has approximately $3.5 million in research grants, funded largely by the National Institutes of Health and American Diabetes Association.

The grants are supporting research on Angiogenesis and Mechanisms of Exercise Training in Peripheral Arterial Disease; Exercise and Type 2 Diabetes; Gender and Endothelial Function; and Genetic Regulation of Hypoxia-Induced Intrauterine Growth Restriction.

BIRCWH Grant

Two of our Junior Researchers, Drs. Jennifer Armstrong-Wells and Stacie Daugherty  have received major grants, respectively from the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health. Both are training grants and will further support the building of their research careers. Stacie's grant is entitled: "Gender Disparities in Invasive Cardiovascular Disease Procedure Use: The Role of Provider Bias" and Jennifer's is entitled, "American Heart Association Clinical Research Grant" and her project is entitled "In-Utero Inflammation as a Risk Factor for Perinatal Stroke."

 These two grants bring in over $800,000 in research funding and you should know that your Center's support of both of these researchers' careers makes a huge difference!  Both of the grants support women's health research.  Jennifer will continue her research in pregnancy and stroke and Stacie will continue working in the area of gender disparities. 

Type 2 Diabetes Research

This research, funded by the American Diabetes Association, is being led by Dr. Judith Regensteiner, PhD, the Director of the CWHR. Dr. Regensteiner and her research group are examining how women and men with Type 2 Diabetes differ in terms of exercise performance compared to people who do not have diabetes. Research has shown there are exercise abnormalities in men and women, but women may have worse abnormalities. This finding is important, because exercise ability is directly associated with being healthier and living longer. It also has been found that abnormalities in heart function are present in people who have had diabetes for a brief time. Current research is focused on understanding and treating exercise abnormalities in women with diabetes to see if the abnormalities can be reversed.

Peripheral Arterial Disease

Peripheral arterial disease causes blockage in the arteries of the legs. This is the same type of blockage that occurs in the heart or neck arteries (causing heart disease or stroke). People with leg artery blockages often also have heart disease or cerebrovascular blockages. Discovering that a person has leg artery disease sometimes is the earliest warning that heart disease may also be present. Of the 12 million people with peripheral arterial disease, about 5 million, or 40%, have severe leg pain and cramping when they walk.

The research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is being led by Dr. Judith Regensteiner, PhD, the Director of the CWHR. Dr. Regensteiner and her research group are evaluating the benefits of exercise rehabilitation for patients with peripheral arterial disease who have leg pain when they walk. Men and women with peripheral arterial disease are being compared to see if women get the same benefits from the exercise program as do men.

Genetic Regulation of Hypoxia-Induced Intrauterine Growth Restriction

The research, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is being led by Lorna G. Moore, PhD, co-founder of the CWHR. Dr. Moore and her research group are undertaking research on women's physiological and circulatory adjustments to pregnancy and the implications of such adjustment for the health of both mother and baby.

Dr. Moore's work concerns ways in which pregnancy and chronic low oxygen states (such as are found at high altitudes and in complicated pregnancy) affect adjustments in the circulation of mother and baby. These changes are extremely important, because a 60-fold increase in blood flow to the womb bed is required for successful pregnancy. This can be impacted negatively by being in a low oxygen state with severe consequences to mother and baby.

Long-term research goals are to understand the effects of normal pregnancy on circulation and the ways in which low oxygen states alter these responses. Dr. Moore is credited with being the first to recognize the role played by a chronic low oxygen state in altering normal changes which occur with pregnancy. Her work led to the first demonstration that susceptibility to low oxygen state-associated reductions in fetal growth is markedly less in long-term residents of high altitude (e.g., Tibetans, Andeans) than shorter-term residents (e.g., Europeans, Chinese or other populations of low-altitude ancestry).

Short-term goals are to determine whether genetic factors are responsible for protecting long vs. shorter term high-altitude residents and if so, what genes are involved. A large, multinational research project is under way in Bolivia to address this question. It involves collecting samples from some 500 people and evaluating thousands of genes and gene-related data. New advances in handling such large data sets and in conducting such analyses are anticipated.

A new research project under development is to determine whether maternal vessels can be collected at the time of Cesarean delivery for testing directly whether the genes implicated are differentially expressed in the relevant vascular bed.

Heart Failure in Women

This research is led by JoAnn Lindenfeld, MD, Associate Director of the CWHR and Director of Heart Transplant at the University of Colorado Denver. A key finding from Dr. Lindenfeld's research is that hormone replacement therapy in older women with advanced heart failure (not related to heart attack) is associated with an improved prognosis. There are about 2 million postmenopausal women in the U.S. with heart failure, defined as inadequate ability of the heart to function. Dr. Lindenfeld analyzed women 50 years of age and over, who were in a large study, comparing survival in hormone replacement therapy users and non-users. She found hormone replacement therapy was associated with a significant reduction in death. Dr. Lindenfeld has done extensive research of gender differences in other drug treatments for heart failure in women.

The enrollment of women in clinical trials also has been evaluated by Dr. Lindenfeld. In recent clinical trials of medical therapy for heart failure, only approximately 20% of patients enrolled were women. Reasons for women's low enrollment have not been clear. When men and women with heart failure are compared, women are more symptomatic and have a similarly poor outcome. Substantial data suggest women may have some specific problems with heart failure more often than men. This difference would explain differences in death rates and the difficulty in enrolling women in studies of medical therapy for heart failure.

Dr. Lindenfeld also has participated in research dealing with "Outcomes by Sex in the African American Heart Failure Trial," and has published a recent review in the area of heart failure in women.