Women’s Health Research Day highlights diabetes
Barrett-Connor’s research concerns healthy aging with a particular focus on gender differences and women’s health. Her topic for the research day involved research in diabetes and covering the history of research up to this point.
“One recent discovery in diabetes is that it is not because of sex, occupation, stress, BMI (body mass index), smoking, alcohol or physical activity,” Barrett-Connor said, “It is because of hormones.”
The hormones in women can change drastically over time, much more so than men, so the varying degree in diabetes changes as well.
“A big struggle for women is they do not know if their ovaries are in or out after a hysterectomy,” Barrett-Connor said. “This can give us misinformation. So we have to go back and ask all of these women’s doctors what exactly was done.”
There are obviously a lot of factors to deciphering what causes diabetes and how to prevent it as well as heart disease.
Along with the keynote speech from Barrett-Connor, all CU faculty, students and fellows were invited to participate in this year’s Women’s Health Research Day poster presentations.
The topic of this year’s poster presentation was Women’s Health or Sex Differences. The winners of the poster presentation were selected by a committee for cash prizes.