ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – It’s a question that impacts the entire country and our state. With a history of atomic bomb testing in New Mexico and leftover uranium mines near the Four Corners, how does uranium impact gut health? It’s a question University of New Mexico associate professor and researcher at the UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center Dr. Julie In is trying to answer.
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“I study the gut and I try to understand what’s happening in the gut when we’re healthy and happy and what’s happening when we’re unhealthy,” said Dr. In. “We like to think of the gut as the highway to the rest of the body.”
And now her research is getting a big boost. The National Institute of Health Sciences just awarded Dr. In $1.9 million over five years to study how uranium impacts the gut when the body’s natural filtering system is overwhelmed. “How it impacts other chronic diseases is really not known and it hasn’t been studied,” she said. “They really have tasked us with understanding if you have this both acute and chronic exposure to uranium from just what you breathe, in from what you consume from food and water, how does it impact the small changes within our cells and how does that lead to bigger changes within our whole body.”…