Key points from today’s guests:

Morning Rounds – Update on Current Events

Akinlolu Ojo, M.D., Ph.D., executive dean, The University of Kansas School of Medicine

• The University of Kansas Medical Center is joining the “All of Us” national research program.
• The goal of the research program is to help bring to reality precision medicine for all our citizens.
• In this effort, we are working to make sure that residents in this part of the Midwest are able to participate in the All of Us research program.
• What it ultimately means is that individuals will be able to receive care that is tailored to their specific biologic factors, including genetic factors, behavioral factors, environmental factors, and other individualized attributes. That makes for a precise tailoring of treatment and prevention of disease.

Tammy Peterman, president – Kansas City Division, The University of Kansas Health System

• Area residents would want to sign up for this because you can learn a whole lot more about yourself and about your health.
• Not only will we learn about DNA and genetic traits, but it also will give us an opportunity for people to learn about potential traits or conditions in the future.
• Because this is a really broad and diverse database, we can learn more about communities and future generations as well.
• It also will give us some indications as to which how individuals will respond to certain medications and then hopefully in the future that will help us develop better treatments.
• You can learn more or sign up by going directly to JoinAllOfUs.org or by speaking to your health care provider and participating organizations like ours.

Focus Topic

Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer, The University of Kansas Health System

• Exercise is one of the best things if not the best thing you can do for your health.
• There was an interesting study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2020 that pulled data from nine large cohorts of different groups.
• Looking at more than 755,000 adults over 10 years, people who regularly exercised had significantly reduced risk of developing seven different types of cancer.
• Colon, breast, endometrial, kidney, liver, myeloma, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma were the cancers that were singled out in the exercise study.

Dr. Jeffrey Holzbeierlein, physician-in-chief, The University of Kansas Cancer Center

• There's been a lot of evidence over the years that has been somewhat difficult to interpret regarding the value of exercise as it relates to cancer.
• It’s unequivocal that exercise benefits us particularly in our cardiovascular health.
• This study was an observational study, so we have to be a little bit cautious about the conclusions that we draw. But the advantage of this is almost 800,000 people that participated in this study did demonstrate significant benefits in cancer rates, and the detection of cancer.
• We were recently involved in a “warrior” study that looked at weight loss aimed at reducing risk associated with prostate cancer. It looked at both exercise and diet to help people lose weight around prostate cancer surgery and we found significant benefits that you might expect in terms of quality of life, vitality, and mental health.
• But interestingly, we were also able to find some data that correlated on the basic science side in particular related to chemokines, which can be involved in cancer progression.

COVID Updates

Dr. Dana Hawkinson, director of infection prevention & control, The University of Kansas Health System

• Active COVID patients in the Health System this week are at 20, which is up from 19 last week. The rate of growth has been pretty slow.
• Two recent studies are looking at long COVID. We are getting closer to defining exactly what is long COVID and then hopefully moving closer to finding remedies for any specific aspect -- whether that is brain fog or shortness of breath, or just fatigue and muscle aches.
• There have been some delays in COVID vaccine availability, but check with commercial pharmacies about their availability.
• There's likelihood of some new COVID variants of some degree everywhere. Any new variants right now that we continue to see will not be incredibly different than all the variants that we have already seen.

Morning Medical Update is on TV in October! The four-part series Cancer: Choices, Hope and Science will air on Tuesdays in October. In the Kansas City area, it’s on KCTV5 at 9:30 a.m. and in Topeka, it’s on WIBW at 9 a.m.

Friday, September 29 at 8 a.m. CT is the next Morning Medical Update. We are celebrating the 25^th anniversary of the hospital with an array of very special guests, including President and CEO Bob Page discussing the evolution of patient care.

ATTENTION MEDIA: Please note access is with Microsoft Teams:

Join on your computer or mobile app

Click here to join the meeting

Meeting ID: 235 659 792 451
Passcode: 6CSfGE

Download Teams | Join on the web

Or call in (audio only)

+1 913-318-8863,566341546#   United States, Kansas City

TVU Grid link: UoK_Health_SDI

Restream links: Facebook.com/kuhospital

YouTube.com/kuhospital

Send advance questions to medicalnewsnetwork@kumc.edu.