Racial disparities in access to pain management services during COVID pandemic at an urban safety-net hospital

Background: Race has been identified as one of the great divisions of mankind, associated with differences in healthcare access in the US. The COVID pandemic has shed light on a variety of disparities, including access to pain management services. Method: All the adult patients who were referred to the pain clinic at Boston Medical Center (BMC) from December 2019- December 2020 were included in this study. A total of 2023 cases (1243 White Race and 790 People of Color) were recruited. Result: Patients of WR received care at a younger age. COVID-19 increased the average age of WR by 2.5 years, while it didn’t affect POC. The average gap between the date of the consult and the procedure was not significantly different between the 2 groups. It also was not significantly different pre-COVID and post-COVID. There were no differences in the racial makeup of the referred patients before and after the pandemic, although the percentage of patients being POC (39.3%) was significantly lower than the racial makeup of the representing population (47.18%). Patients of WR were significantly more likely to have completed visits (66.3%) than POC (60.5%). Conclusion: Our study demonstrated disparities between the WR and POC that were evident even before starting the COVID-19 pandemic. It also showed that these disparities continued to be the same as before COVID-19. Although many disparities are rooted in the society itself, we noticed that in numerous instances, pain management services were offered equally at our institution. We suggest that multiracial administrative staff living in the same community and hospital-sponsored support systems were the main contributors

Identification and Quantification of Secreted Proteins Driving Hematopoiesis in an Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Coculture System

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) results from a genetic alteration in hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). Recent treatment techniques focused on the utilization of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) as an avenue to introduce HSCs in patients with AML. In this study, we analyze whether OP9 cells assist in HSC differentiation through direct cell signaling or indirect cell signaling of iPSCs. We measured the expression levels of relevant cytokines known to play a role in hematopoiesis. Our data showed a significant upregulation of all the proteins we analyzed in the iPSC/OP9 direct coculture and significant downregulation in the iPSC/OP9 indirect coculture. Our results indicate that direct cell to cell contact with OP9 cells may be necessary to induce differentiation of iPSCs