PittPharmacy student Matthew Gray (Class of 2018) recently presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology in Washington, DC. His presentation title was “A Comparison of Caregiving Burden and Impact in Systemic Vasculitis versus Other Conditions.”
For this project, Gray analyzed data from an online survey of caregivers of patients with systemic vasculitis (a rare autoimmune disease) that was linked to publically available data from respondents completing a survey on caregiving within the national Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS). Gray found that caregivers of vasculitis patients were more likely than caregivers of patients with other conditions to report poor mental health, poor physical health, and poor sleep in the past 30 days, as well as caregiving-related stress and financial burden. Results from his work will inform the design of future caregiving support interventions tailored to caregivers of systemic vasculitis patients. Faculty member Carolyn Thorpe, PhD, MPH is Gray’s mentor on this project.
Congratulations to PittPharmacy graduate student Katie Eichinger, research technician Jessica Kosanovich, and Marc McCann (Class of 2018), members of Kerry Empey’s Lab for amazing platform presentations and posters at the Autumn Immunology Conference in Chicago, November, 2016.
Eichinger’s poster was titled: “Remembering RSV: The role of alveolar macrophages.”
Kosanovich’s poster was titled: “Generation of RSV-specific CD8+ T Cells in Neonatal Mice Following IFNγ Treatment.”
McCann’s poster was titled: “Interferon gamma Treatment Increases Prostaglandin Levels in Neonatal Mice.”
Kerry M. Empey, PharmD, PhD is an assistant professor in the pharmacy and therapeutics department at PittPharmacy.
